Right Between the Eyes
by Nitlon
Summary: AU-ish, Seiner. The world falls apart and everybody else leaves and then you're stuck together running away from the grown ups.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter One: God Help Those Who Do Not Help Themselves.**

* * *

A/N: I'm wondering if my tastes just naturally run this way, or if I always choose to write completely doomed stories _because_ nobody will read them. I mean, come on. Dystopian Seiner? Not gonna be up there in the list of epic shit, I'll say that. Anyways, warnings for this chapter are basically just: strong language and shameless Zexion-sympathizing.

Oh, and I'm aware it moves quickly. If I continue, it'll go way slower than it does here. I just needed to establish stuff.

* * *

Hope is the thing with feathers  
That perches in the soul.  
And sings the tune  
Without the words,  
and never stops at all.  
- **Emily Dickinson****

* * *

**

Seifer and Hayner knew a secret. You can't be in love, until you've seen early morning sunlight glinting off of shattered bones and a stream of blood running down a dead man's chin.

They found him just after five in the morning on a Sunday, running away from a man they'd deemed too rich who wasn't anymore.

"Is he dead?" Hayner asked.

The thing lay under the only tree growing on this side of the river, which wasn't really a river in the winter so much as frozen black glass. A shard of bone, pinkish-yellow with the stains of blood veins, pierced the air and its head lolled back, mouth open and wide with a tongue hanging out like a panting dog.

Mostly-whole pieces of cloth stuck to the thing, and resting halfway on the ground and halfway on the breast of the jacket was a clump of hair torn from the scalp.

Five in the morning and the bones of his shins stuck into the air like giant splinters, one arm still attached and head lolling back.

"'Course he's dead, chickenwuss," Seifer muttered. For once, Hayner didn't object to the namecalling. "Never seen a dead _body_ before?"

"He's – " Hayner laughed, high and insincere, before he dry-heaved. Like a giant hiccup, and the stupid fucking speakers – speakers in the street meant for _fuck all_ and why they kept them maintained but left bodies in the road, he couldn't know – were playing Christmas music for once, instead of being used for dystopic threats from any gangs in charge that day. _O Holy Night_.

_For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn._

Funny because the sun was rising and he did the next thing, though the woman's voice, high and soaring, pissed him off.

_Fall on your knees –_

He fell onto all fours, his hands splayed on the ground in front of him, coughing. He felt his throat tighten and convulse, felt his stomach heave emptily, trying to puke up food he hadn't eaten for days. The stench of the rotting body hung heavy in the air, somehow wet and sickly sweet, like finding long-dead animals in the road. Bile rose in his throat.

_O night, o night divine –_

The speakers were abruptly cut off with the loud snap of static and silence punctuated his empty puking. He spat out water that tasted like stomach juice, hot and acidic, but nothing else.

_Do you remember when the only time you felt like puking was car sickness?_ He laughed to himself inwardly.

"Jesus, Hayner! You're such a fuckin' baby."

The sound of Seifer's steps, and the flap of his light coat (now stained dirty with mud and blood and oil) were always what let Hayner know where he was. Right now he was next to him, hands in his pockets, staring at the top of Hayner's too-blond head.

His dizzied mind slowly steadied itself, like he'd been spinning in circles until he fell down. When he stood up, the ground tilted to the side and he halfway tripped sideways before gripping his head. The world righted itself.

"Sorry, _Seif_," he muttered. "I guess we can't all grow up surrounded by corpses."

Bodies left out by the river, whose banks were solid concrete and whose forest was broken brick. Next to the river lay a train track which no train could ever run on again.

Seifer's arm, tanned and sweaty, came around Hayner's shoulders, gripping his upper arm. "Stand up straight, pansy," he sighed. "'Sides, the corpses thing's only been the last – ah, fuck. What's the year?"

"Ten since." It was depressing he had to think about it first.

"Right. It's been all corpses and gang bangers since ten. Before that it was fucking peaches, chickenwuss. Even for those of us who didn't have rich-ass parents."

There was a fedora next to the body, too, now that he looked at it with curious detachment. It was nondescript, brown, stained with blood spatters, but nowhere near as awful as the discolored rotting skin next to it. They couldn't see his face – assuming it was a he, girls were worth more alive, after all – and Hayner wondered who it had been, and why he had died.

The post-apocalyptic part of Hayner's mind told him that with a little sun-bleaching and a nice rock for sharpening, those shin bones, sticking up curiously parallel and pink with blood running through tiny fissures, would make – good spears. Arrows. Harpoon-ends.

He felt sick to his stomach again thinking that; he felt dizzy like the ground was tilting after spinning around.

"Didn't have rich-ass parents," Hayner grunted. "Rich-ass friends. Besides, don't act like you were some freakin' street urchin."

The speakers crackled on again.

_Have yourself a merry little Christmas –_

"Ha!" Seifer laughed and shook his arm around Hayner's shoulders. "Goddamn! Stupid fuckers! Merry Christmas, chickenwuss. Let's go find someplace to crash."

"What was wrong with where we stayed yesterday?" They'd slept on trash bags outside what used to be a bakery.

"Got shot at, moron. I got the feeling we weren't _wanted_." The cheerful bells on the speakers rang in Hayner's ears and he shook Seifer's arm off his shoulders.

He shoved his hands in his camo-pants pockets, wiggling his toes in his boots. The sunlight glanced over the bones, glinted on bloated glistening flesh and tattered clothing; he considered looking through the guys pants for cash. But nah. It wasn't worth it. "This sucks," he said generally, blinking.

"Can't argue with you on that one." Seifer squared his jaw in his head.

Hayner had never seen someone _so_ dead before. Just shot, or bloody, yeah, freshly out of the land of the living, but the body was _so_ fucking dead it hurt him to look at it.

Seifer started walking before he tore his eyes away from it; Hayner ran to catch up with him.

This place hurt to look at; everything was dead brown dust. The city didn't even have a goddamn name anymore, changed with whoever ran it. The buildings were tall and they crumbled if you looked at them too long. At night, there were lights, at the very tops of the buildings where the Rich Men lived, and lit on the street corners by generous people with dying cigarettes, cast off in the lanterns. Or the clothing of the whores, who didn't have any other hope of getting noticed.

Ah, you got good at hiding in a stagnant place like this.

"Hey! You two!"

"Wha-"

"_Hey!_ What'd you do to that guy!?"

"The hell!" Seifer turned around and shouted, motioning to Hayner. Hayner met him halfway, back-to-back, looking in the opposite direction of the voice – for where to hide, for streets to run down, for other guys coming for them.

Seifer tensed against his back. "What do you want?"

"I'm telling you, I _saw_ them stand around his body for a good ten, fifteen minutes – you tell me that isn't suspicious – "

"I said okay, didn't I? Besides, it's them or nobody. I'm not goin' back to him empty-handed."

"Seifer – " Hayner started, but was quickly shushed. They were gang cronies, had to be.

It was safer in gangs like it was safer in wolf packs. But Rai and Fuu had been killed fast back then, and Seifer refused to be somebody's underling – just on principle, stupid fuck that he was.

"That guy'd been dead for days, anyone could tell that." Under his breath, he added, "Lamer, you still have the knife you lifted off that old guy?"

It was unnerving, not being able to see your attackers. Hayner breathed faster.

(He had learned to ignore the insults.)

"Aw, that's so cute, he thinks we care."

"Xigbar, please stop playing the role of textbook-villain. It's getting embarrassing to go out on patrol with you."

He searched his pockets, ran his hands down over them, over his vest, down into his boots.

Some creepy, old Rich Man had propositioned him the other day – thought he was a male street-whore. And, hey, they weren't uncommon.

(Hayner remembered finding out whores were real. Not things in books, movies, TV-shows. That there were people like the kid next to you in math class who would grow up to go out, and stand on corners like they were waiting for their mothers to come pick them up from a soccer game – only waiting for a stranger, someone who just wanted a quick fuck. That Angela from AP English would let perverted old businessmen between her thighs for enough money because the world had run out of oil and the cars had all stopped running and she couldn't get a job. Remembered seeing a girl on a curb and being forcibly dragged away from her by Seifer.)

The Rich Man had proved himself useful only in that he'd had an old knife on his belt that Hayner'd been able to nick before bolting.

But – but he didn't –

"Hayner! You stupid ass, hurry it _up_!"

"I don't think I have it – "

"You _lost_ it!?"

Cut a hole through his big pocket how hadn't he _noticed_ –

"Watch carefully, Zex. Doesn't take your fancy-ass tools to knock out a couple of punks."

* * *

It was a concert hall. It was beautiful, grand, tall and broad and golden.

Elaborate pillars framed the stage, adorned with cherubs at the top – like in a church or something – an organ in the back corner, the well-lit floor beautiful wood. The seats were plush and red, wooden, too, with golden number plates and green carpet, and dark here. There was a balcony. It reached all the way around the top, and it rained shadow down on the first few rows of seats where they were being held.

"Like that, dontcha, boys? Haven't seen something pretty for a _while_, have ya?"

"Don't talk to prisoners." The one with the grey hair pursed his lips. "I already feel like enough of a henchman." He sighed. "I miss the music here."

_"Hayner! Hey, Hayner!" Olette kept trying to push her wet hair out of her face; it kept falling back in. "Have you started on your English project yet?"_

_"Oh. Yeah, actually. Isn't it just like, drawing pictures?"_

_She nodded tugged on her top, which was hanging funny after she put it over her wet bathing suit. This close to summer, school didn't feel like school anymore. It was coasting. He loved no finals. "We're supposed to represent the theme visually. What are you doing?"_

_"Oh. Well, it's about like, how we shouldn't let other people make decisions for us, right? So I'm just gonna draw a bunch of people trying to like – I dunno, push someone off a cliff and he'll be like 'no!'."_

_Olette scrunched up her nose and made a face at him._

_"What?" he asked._

_"Lame," she said. "That's so freshman, Hayner."_

Yeah, well, Mr. Prettyboy not-a-henchman, he missed the school. Imagine what nostalgia could do to your worst memories.

Their arms were hastily bound with old dishcloths, behind their backs. Hayner's bare arm, his shoulder, kept touching Seifer's, brushing and sticking from nervous sweat.

"Seifer, I'm sorry." He hadn't thought of the knife since he'd lifted it from that guy; it hadn't come in handy at all. And now it was his fault this quickly.

"Don't talk to me," Seifer hissed, and made the effort to jerk his bound arm away from Hayner's, though his captor steadied him roughly. His eyes traveled to the was-a-stage, still glistening with dead luster, where a desk was laid out like a stage prop.

(Hayner imagined it was a school play and he was a high school freshman and the Olympics still happened every four years. Fuck, this didn't feel like the future.)

"It can't be so bad," he insisted. "They won't gain anything from killing us, right? So they won't."

"Ha! Why, 'cause it's Jesus's birthday? Good luck with that one." Seifer sneered. "Maybe they'll just sell _you_ to the highest bidder, ya fuckin' waif. You're probably worth more like that. Me, I'm lucky if I get stuck as a transporter or something. Thanks a lot, chickenwuss."

A man sat at the desk, his hair a synthetic pink, his chest unfairly muscled – the kind that comes with careful working-out in a gym, toning this and that, not from scrounging food and running away from guns and trying to catch up to Seifer. He was clicking at his computer.

"You know who he is?" Seifer asked him.

Hayner looked at him like he was mad. Did he _know_ who that _was_? Fuck, everyone knew who that was! Vain asshole flaunted his power – posters up everywhere – flaunted that he'd killed Xemnas and nobody could do anything about it.

So why would he ask – oh.

Hayner wasn't good at the dystopia thing. He had the mind of a high schooler whose biggest experience with violence was hearing about the war in Iraq on TV.

"No," Hayner whispered back. He pinched his lips to keep from smiling, not because he was happy, but because that nervous tightness in his chest wouldn't leave.

There were times he couldn't help but wonder now if he'd soon be one of the dead rotting bodies that made kids like him puke in the street. He didn't _want_ to die, it wasn't _fair_. He was supposed to grow up and go to college and get a major in communications and a minor in art history.

"Damn, me neither," said Seifer, who'd made it a point to show him Marluxia's picture the first day they started together. "Probably some small-time mob boss – "

"Boy, ya really are a couple of ignorant streeties, aren't ya?" the eyepatch one made it a point to ask them. "Never heard of him?"

"What's a streetie?" Hayner asked honestly.

Eyepatch barked a laugh. "You! Stupid kids, too useless to be let into a gang for protection – "

"We don't fuckin' _call_ ourselves that," Seifer spat. His hair had started going limp, and strands of dirty blond hung out from under his hat. "_Streeties_," he laughed and shook his head.

"Not like we have weekly meetings," Hayner added with a smirk. Seifer snorted, though Hayner knew it was just a sign of solidarity – laugh at your partner's remarks because you stick together.

Fuck it. He didn't care what some asshole like Seifer thought of him anyways.

And then it was the man's voice, a thousand things together: like going to the principal's office, your father asking you to bring down the laundry sternly, your teacher telling you not to draw on your notebook in class, the cold superiority of an older sibling's friend, smug cruelty from a stranger on the train, and the bitter velvet of a jaded street whore.

"Much as I enjoy watching cretins discuss vernacular, I don't suppose you'd like to join us in the light any time soon? Zexion."

"Why's he always talk to _you_?" eyepatch muttered.

"Because he knows I hate him," said the other one.

They forced both of the boys down the carpeted isle, down until they were right in front of Marluxia, whose chin was placed on his hand, eyes casually perusing the screen in front of him.

"Well," he deadpanned.

"You asked for his murderers," the calmer one told him, looking straight up at Marluxia. His eye glittered. "We brought you murderers."

It was just that broken worlds were meant to happen hundreds of years in the future, and there would be robots everywhere, and cyber-terrorism, and people in air ships flying around. Where did all of the cool stuff go?

Their leader laughed to himself a little and shook his head. "These? Come on. Kids? You can do better than that, Zexion."

Zexion's eyes narrowed and his grip on Hayner's arm tightened. "Are you saying I would ever _lie_ to you, Marluxia?"

"Still," the pink-haired man continued without regard. "I suppose…" He stood, and he was wearing only a long-sleeved black shirt, and black pants, and black shoes. He looked like a freakin' theater major. And his boots tap-tap-tapped on the stage floor as he walked closer and leapt off the stage.

He smelled sickly sweet, and like shampoo – no fair no fair, said Hayner's mind – and he came far too close, leaning in towards them.

His eyes were a dark, his eyelashes long. His face was disgustingly pretty, and clean, though there was a small scar at the outside corner of his eye, soft and pale. He had a strong jaw, and his straight nose ended in a perfect point, leading its viewer on to well-formed lips in a pitying smile. He was beautiful and Hayner didn't like him; it was strange to see this face moving after seeing so many posters.

"How about it?" he asked softly. "Did you kill one of my friends?"

"You think you're clever, don't you?" Seifer jerked in his bonds. Eyepatch jerked back to keep him in place. "Come on. How long you been in power? A week? Two weeks, a month? How long you think it'll last, either? Not much longer than – "

Marluxia had been in control for upwards of a year.

The man snorted and laughed. He switched his eyes to Seifer. "Asserting your power? Pretty cocky if you've been accused of murder. I'm afraid I don't have any courts to try you in – it's all me, honey."

"Any moron could tell we didn't do it," he said darkly. "Use your eyes. Hayner was puking from the freakin' _sight_ of that thing."

Hayner puked at the sight of a dead body. Hayner couldn't even keep track of a knife he stole. Hayner couldn't survive on his own. It was Hayner's fault Roxas left and Olette left and Pence died.

_Fuck, people really die?_ He missed thinking like that.

"Mm, yeah," Marluxia smirked. "I'll give you that. So that's a no on the murder?" Like it was that easy?

"You don't get anything out of killing a guy but trouble when you're like us. 'Course we didn't kill him."

Marluxia's lowered eyelids and raised eyebrows made for skepticism, and he smiled at them. He brought two fingers under Seifer's chin and raised his face up like he was inspecting meat. "Nn," he said nonchalantly. "You'll do." He released Seifer's face harshly and turned to Zexion. "Put out the message we've caught Luxord's killers," he instructed. "I don't care what you imply we've done to them, just make sure it circulates. We need to lull him into a false sense of security -" he took a step back and cupped his hands around his mouth and nose, closing his eyes and breathing calmly. "And get Luxord's body. Burn it, submerge it, bury it under the building, feed it to vultures – I don't care. But don't let him rot out there." He lowered his arms and looked Hayner in the eyes. "Sets a bad precedent."

"And the kids?" Zexion's one visible eye narrowed. He called them kids when they couldn't have been much older than they were. He was probably still in high school when the crash happened.

(The world had run out of time and out of fuel. That's what happens when you keep telling each other to do something about the oil crisis and all anyone can do is talk about solutions. Everything stopped moving one day.)

"I don't care," he said. "As long as they aren't running around outside. Aren't I generous?"

Hayner, who hadn't spoken to the man at all and was feeling pretty safe in his obscurity, shot Marluxia a death glare like he was looking at his math test. Marluxia laughed at him, too. "Don't look at me like that," he advised poisonously. "It's not my fault what happened." He spread his arms out, indicating the stage, or the theater, or the world itself. "Mankind evolved to deal with disaster," he said. "We all found our little niches. I wonder if it's easier to blame me than to have nobody to blame at all?"

* * *

"But we didn't _do_ anything, Seifer!"

"_Obviously_. Asshole's just making a power play and using us as an example. Don't think about it."

"Excuse me for not wanting to be some pink-haired flaming queer's _bitch_."

"Stop it. Shut up, lamer. You can't think of 'em as human; you'll go more nuts than you are now. Think of it like…like a storm. Yeah, I like that. Some natural disaster came down n' crushed your house. Don't blame the storm; just get out of there with your skin in tact. Got it?"

"I hate this. I hate you. Hate him."

"Ah, calm down. We'll be dead soon anyways. Don't feel bad, chickenwuss, the knife wouldn't've helped even if you _had_ had it."

* * *

They were not dead quite so soon, naturally. In all likelihood Seifer hadn't expected them to be at all (not that Zexion or eyepatch had felt like sharing), but he'd told Hayner that to – to what? Make the reality seem less bad? Unlikely. To guilt him for not having the knife – or for just being useless in general.

Maybe it was just Seifer being Seifer. The way he was when they were ten years ago and had barely hit puberty. He was just screwing with Hayner's head and letting him think they were gonna die to see the look on his stupid blond face.

Ha. Asshole.

This was a theater, though; the only place they had at their disposal was a green room. Damn, it sure was a nice one, though. All windows. It looked into a courtyard filled with greenery, exotic plants, birds – a menagerie, maybe, wouldn't put it past extravagant men. There was a glass dome over the top. Like looking into a rain forest and you were trapped here.

They were forced into the room with little ceremony, a wink and a "be good" from eyepatch, whose name they still didn't know. Zexion held the door open for a while, watching them stumble in. He caught Hayner's eye.

"We – " he started, hand tightening on the door knob. "I was an environmental science major," he said. "Wind power was gonna be everything." A shiver passed through his body, shaking the sheet of hair on one side of his face. "Please don't look at me like that."

He locked the door.

There was a crushing weight on Hayner's stomach, trying to crack his ribcage in half, like something inside him had ruptured and black ooze was seeping out into his belly, his throat, his arms. He felt weak; his knees shook. He wanted to fall on his knees and vomit again. _O night when Christ was born_, he thought bitterly.

It was bad before – you went to dumpsters, old car parks, dismantled what you could – sold the parts, got any dirt you could and grew shit for food. Ate grass but – God, that was the thing. No more cars. No smoke. No factories or street vendors shouting, but – the sky was blue every fucking day, unless it rained, pure clean rain without any acid. The world had gone cold turkey on fossil fuel and was going through withdrawal.

It was quiet sometimes. Really, actually quiet. Computers didn't hum. The electric buzzing of televisions was gone. The grind of coffeemakers gone. At least out there you were free.

"Yo, lamer," Seifer muttered. "Back-to-back, see if you can untie me and I'll return the favor."

They weren't the only ones in the room, he noticed now, as he leaned his back against Seifer's. There were a lot of girls in the room, too. He didn't know what it meant that he couldn't feel anything about that – two guys and about thirty girls their age in the same room. Pretty girls. He didn't have the energy to wake up his libido.

"Quit wigglin' around," he commanded the older blond, ignoring the curious looks. Seifer's palms were sweaty, his bare shoulders warm, and he smelled like cotton and tropical dirt. Hayner felt around for the knot of the dishcloth between his hands; it was bumpy, scratched his fingers as he dug them in between the cloth and pried it apart.

_Like shoelaces._

"Ah," Seifer said, bringing his hands forward and rubbing his wrists. "That's better. Turn around while I do you; I gotta talk to you."

"What?" Hayner turned around on instinct, though his hands were tied behind his back. Seifer leaned forward and brought his hands around Hayner, untying the rag. He whispered words in his ear, awkward and warm and moist. "Come on, chickenwuss, a bunch of teenage girls in a room? Either they're gonna be sold or they're this guy's personal harem. I don't care how innocent they are, they might try somethin' and that'd only piss Marluxia off. Act gay." He smirked against Hayner's ear. "Comes naturally to you, anyways."

He gritted his teeth and tried to ignore the old, angry flame burning in his gut; that stupid, childish fury. He wanted to kick and scream and throw things and break pencils when Seifer acted like this. Why'd he have to add that last thing? Sometimes the guy was fucking tolerable. Sometimes he was nice and Hayner felt like he had somebody – and sometimes he was the _stupid fuck_ from Twilight Town days who did nothing but push Hayner's buttons.

"Fuck you!" Jerking away from Seifer, he wriggled at the loosened knot around his wrists and freed his hands. "I get it, okay?"

"Get what?" Seifer looked at him seriously, and his eyes glittered.

Hayner thought colors were things. Not like blue was sadness. Like…black was Olette's hair after going swimming at the beach, purple was Hayner's handkerchief, red was his shirt – so they were good colors.

And blue was – Seifer. He associated the two things. He'd never gotten close enough to Seifer, before, to see what color his eyes were – so now that he had he had a special feeling for them. Seifer's eyes – blue eyes, anyone's eyes – were hope. They were something better. They were Someday. When the world was older.

"_Get what_," Hayner spat back at him. "I'm a fucking _burden_ and you don't _want me around_ and you'd do better on your own! I get it you think I'm some f- charity case!"

The girls were really looking at them strangely now, standing awkwardly behind the grey chairs or the several dining tables, next to the green couch or by the white cracked walls – with eye-bolts in for chains, the walls. They seemed almost not-there, they were so quiet, but he felt embarrassed to be arguing in front of them all the same.

"What, you want me to just abandon you?" It was like they were performing on a stage.

Hayner took a long, deep breath; it shook on the way back out. Angry. Like Roxas if you asked too many questions.

"Whatever," he sighed. He was sick of the arguing. "Let's just – I dunno."

Seifer came closer and Hayner wound his arms around his own stomach to hold all his insides in. He glanced outside, at the giant window, the big fancy tropical plants (a power play?) and the sky which was white with clouds, the light dirty and pale.

"You don't get to be mad," he grumbled. "You're the one who lost the knife."

"I'm not mad at _you_," Hayner said, even though he was. Mad at Seifer for being the taller one, with the better muscles, for not losing his hat still, for knowing what to do, for Hayner listening to him.

"Um," it was the first girl under thirty to speak to him in over eight years. Her hair was red and her eyes were hope. "Sorry to – bother you? It's just that that guy's been trying to get your attention for like, three minutes."

They looked where she pointed (she wasn't dressed like a whore, not in her pink skirt and shirt, her sneakers), and sure enough was the only other male occupant of the room.

A thick wire cable was welded firmly to a shackle around his ankle, bolted to the wall. The cable itself couldn't have been much more than – four feet, five feet long?

"Fuck," Hayner whispered hoarsely.

He wasn't _actually_ wearing a shirt. He had brown hair and blue eyes and Roxas face. He was grinning.

"Jeez, finally!" he laughed and waved them over. "Can you guys come closer? I'd go over there, but, well…" he lifted his cable and it made a 'clank' noise, almost like it was a chain.

Hayner Conway felt like he hadn't been able to sit down and catch his breath for ten years. Dammit. Ten years?

"Lamer," Seifer said, eyes trained on the boy. "Forgive my foggy mem'ry, but that kid – "

"Roxas," Hayner groaned. "I mean not exactly but that's creepy. That's – I don't want to talk to him."

Seifer pinched his lips funny and strained the dirty dishcloth in his hands. The not-Roxas was looking at them, cast sharply against the white wall and the green next to him, the red-headed girl coming over, smiling and curious.

"I get that," was all he had to offer. "But sour bananas for you, Hay." He grabbed Hayner's arm and yanked him the ten feet over, to stand and look at the boy – surprisingly well-washed, considering he was chained to the wall.

"What're you guys doing here, huh?" he laughed. "I'm Sora. Haven't seen another guy in – well, a while."

Seifer and Hayner exchanged glances. "We're – " he hesitated and looked at the taller blond. "Decoys," was his suggestion.

"Or substitutes," Seifer added.

"Wow. That's major suck," Sora made a face and leaned against his wall. "What for?"

"Accused of killing someone named…" swearing quietly, Seifer crouched down, playing with the hem of his jacket.

Hayner crouched down next to him and inwardly cursed himself for following. "Luxord," he said. He looked Sora in the face.

_"Okay, first thing, you cannot survive off of the money from Struggle tournaments your whole life, Hayner." Roxas picked at the discarded sticky wrapping of his Rocket Pop._

_"Why not? There're professional Struggle players!"_

_"They make most of their money doing lessons, moron," he told Hayner. Feigning dejection, Hayner slid off the bed and bonked his head on the bedroom floor._

_He cried, "No! Roxas, I will be a true Struggler! I will suffer for my art!"_

_"You just want to beat up Seifer for the rest of your life."_

_"No. That's just a bonus."_

_Roxas sighed, watching the plastic fish scroll around one of those kiddie lanterns, casting shadows on the wall. They rolled around like a conveyor belt. "I wish you'd quit fighting with that guy," he confessed. "It's just making us all kinda unhappy."_

_"Yeah, well," Hayner scoffed. "Maybe I'll be as mellow as you once I start crushing on **guys**."_

_Roxas rolled the popsicle stick between his fingers. "You said you were fine with it," he muttered eventually._

_"I am. If I avoided making fun of you for it that would be weird. Deal with it." He smirked. "Wuss."_

"What about you?" he asked.

"Ah," Sora frowned. "I, uh, kinda let freed a ton of people in this room." He coughed. "Three times? So the third time I got…caught." Waggling the chain. "And this happened."

The redhead sat down next to him and put her arm around his shoulders. "Cheerful bastard," she accused him. He grinned at both of them, and it did strange things to Hayner's stomach.

To see hope there. To see Someday. To see We Will Win in anyone's eyes but Seifer's.

"Sounds like major suck," Hayner told him.

Sora laughed and wiggled a little, sitting different on his butt. "Nah." His eyes trained on his feet, tracing the line of the shackle familiarly. "I got it under control." He looked at the redhead girl. "Riku will come," he said. "We have a plan. You'll see. Riku'll be here in no time flat and I will be _outta_ here, Kai." He smiled to himself now, and hugged his knees.

"He needs to get some stuff together. Until then I'm just going to sound naïve when I tell people he's coming for me," Sora sounded painfully grounded. "Hey, you guys know any camp songs?"

"What is this place?" Seifer ignored the guy's question. It was actually familiar to Hayner – like being in a big city; you couldn't give money to every homeless guy. You couldn't placate all the stupid children. You had to walk past some of them.

"Dunno, really. I think Marluxia sells some of these girls off to the Rich Men, but most of them just stay here. You think he's trying to raise a purer generation?" Sora laughed. "He does like pretty things."

"What do you think he'll do with us?" was the next thing Seifer asked.

Shrugging. "Sell you? Have you work as underlings? Messengers? I hear they need messengers."

(Since they didn't have cars or email anymore.)

He tapped his forehead. "Hopefully you stick around long enough, though," he said in low voice, conspiratorially. "I've got a plan. I know this guy up north – he's working on the problem. Building ships. Sail boats, sure, but he's also making hot air balloons. Maybe even – " laughing – "Maybe even modify them, you know? So the balloons don't just float around. Like smaller blimps!"

He tilted his head to the side, staring out at the rising sun behind thick white clouds, just like ten before. "It'll be okay," he sighed. "People just need to stop freaking out long enough for it to _be_ okay."

* * *

They stayed eight long, peaceful days in that green room. It felt surreal.

Hayner Conway could breathe. God. He could _breathe_ now. But it was choked and foggy, and too inside. Teased through two layers of glass with the blue hope sky.

The girls kept to themselves, mostly, because it was a large room and they were scared to mess with Seifer. They spoke with Sora – frequently. Sora who would inform them of the date and how everything was going to be okay.

Sometimes, Hayner would look at Seifer and Seifer would look back, and they'd know what the other was thinking: _it's so sad. He really believes this._

It was easy to hope for a future of flying ships and sail boats and no electricity. Hard when you lived the reality, not closed off in a little green box.

The night of December thirty-first, Hayner and Seifer claimed the spot under the big window, staring out into the greenery which barely ever moved. Seifer was on his back, arms behind his head, staring up. Hayner on his belly, staring down and playing with a piece of shriveled lettuce from lunch.

"No flying ships," Seifer said. Everyone was asleep, draped across the couch, on the floor, curled up together.

Hayner missed being friends with girls; they hugged you.

"No," Hayner agreed.

"But maybe – something," Seifer looked at him seriously. "Eventually. We'll get out of here at least."

"You think?"

"Yeah." Seifer wasn't so much of an asshole late at night, when they were tired and sick of fighting. "Fix the earth. Live on farms and shit. No cities. No towns. Just once a month meetings so we can mate and not have incest."

Hayner smirked. "Tease," he muttered. And then he added, "…someday."

That was when Seifer shifted awkwardly, brought his arm out from under his head and raised it perpendicular to the floor, his pointer and middle fingers extended in a 'V'.

"Godspeed, momma Earth," he said sleepily, staring at the blue light outside. And Hayner wondered how very locked their locked door was.

He raised his hand up too, to face the window, and smirked at Seifer.

"Godspeed, momma Earth," he echoed.

* * *

A/N: I enjoyed writing this. I do not think anyone will enjoy reading this. Wow would I make a bad professional author.

Thoughts would be very nice, though.

Oh, and happy holidays, say goodbye to the decade, all that.

...I missed Saturday morning cartoons this morning. This has upset...my entire day.


	2. Shooting an Elephant

A/N: Seriously though. Did anyone else think Justin Bieber was a girl when they first heard him sing?

* * *

**Chapter Two: Shooting an Elephant.**

**

* * *

**

It's a sad day when you find out that it's not accident or time or fortune, but just yourself that kept things from you.  
**- Lillian Hellman**

* * *

He woke up the next morning lying funny on his back, and his elbow twisted down under his stomach, facing that stupid window. The problem was it had two layers – theirs looked out into the garden, and the garden's window was on the ceiling – so light came through slow and later than it really rose. Usually.

It messed you up, he'd noticed after the first few days, once you were used to sleeping when you found a place and waking up when…well, there wasn't a set pattern for waking up. Maybe when someone found you and got mad.

But now they slept until near noon when the sun finally reached them; they went to sleep accordingly late.

There was almost no real light in that room, and Hayner was the first one up. He didn't move for a long time. He pretended he was ten and having a sleepover at Pence's house.

Yesterday had been New Year's. Technically. So that made it eleven since. Eleven? Oh, goody, this year he'd turn old enough to drink legally.

That was a laugh, Mister Hayner. "Legally." Like there were laws. Ha! Get it?

He stared outside, past the big leafy ambiguous plants, up towards where the sun was just peaking up where he could see it and magnified by the bubbles of the glass dome. Some funny part of him liked the sparkle of light on the edge of the window frame, and childishly he raised his hand up from his stomach and spread his fingers out, placing his palm over the light (or, where the light was for him). It was, for the most part, blocked out. And like it was a fly or a piece of dust floating in the air or a feather, he closed his hand around it, as if to catch. The light was not caught, of course, but spilled back out into his vision again, silhouetting his fist.

So Hayner Conway associated blinding white sunlight with a room full of prisoners and Seifer. He associated blinding white with the relief of a place to sleep safely and the freedom to be trapped, with waking up before anyone else did and catching the air. What of it? He didn't know, and wasn't sure he wanted to. But what he did do, was he smiled and decided he was ready to actually wake up.

Eleven years since the world ran out of gas and things stopped moving, and people just stopped going places altogether. Eleven years since widespread electricity and communication and flying over the ocean and driving in a car and _trains_, really the only thing he missed was the train that ran through Twilight Town.

How could the problems be fixed if none of them could talk to each other? No more firing off an email across the country. The world had been shrinking; eleven years ago Europe was a few hours away on a plane, you could video chat with your friend in China, Google anything you wanted to know about anything, and they'd gotten so used to it – hadn't been able to – _adapt_ fast enough, had gotten too advanced to go back to how it was.

The world was stuck in park. In limbo. It had gotten bigger.

It was almost but not very surprising the way that the normal things never really left you. There were days he wanted absolutely nothing more than he wanted a _shower_, to feel completely and totally clean. Not temporary-clean that standing under the rain gave you, that washing your arms with dirty water gave you.

His whole head felt greasy, his hair slick with oil, itchy. He imagined tiny bugs crawling all up and down his skin and pooping on it. He thought about that time he'd had the seven-year-old-genius idea of using his new magnifying glass to look at his skin, at all the tiny little creases in it, that curiously organized geometric pattern of lines. He thought about each of those creases being filled with dirt or – or blood.

So Hayner sat up, crouched, stood all the way up like he was unfolding himself and made his way over to the fair-sized brown plastic basin of water they'd been given.

As horrible as it was he a little bit liked it here. Because you knew when you would be fed, and every day a new brown plastic basin of water and a piece of cloth to wash yourself. And even – even with all this crap and the constant not-quite-clean feeling he felt in the geometric cracks of his skin, that stupid teenage boy mentality of "I don't want girls to see me naked" went in his mind and he just couldn't wash under his shirt or his pants with this many girls around! There weren't supposed to be boys in this room, he could tell.

But everyone was asleep now, so it was alright, and anyways the basin was secluded, in the tiny room-ish protrusion off by the very back, like somebody had pushed a section of the wall in and left a corner all to yourself. What a funny shape for a room. Like square with a square pimple off the side and rounded around the big window-wall. He shivered, glanced nervously at the opening of the protrusion to make sure there wasn't anyone awake who could see him (only Seifer was close enough, and that was okay) and pulled off his shirt. He sat down, cross-legged, in front of the water and squeezed out the cloth.

He stared funny at one spot on his arm, bit his tongue to keep himself awake. With a certain sort of consciouslessness he started scrubbing at his arm with the rag, up and down and up and down, watching his skin get pulled one way or another and bounce back, watching his skin turn red.

The underside of his arm was next, then his shoulder. He scrubbed even harder at his chest, dirtied from the residue of sweat on the inside of the shirt, under his armpits (don't tell the girls; they won't want to wash with armpit rags).

"Go easy there," was the quiet sound.

"Sora?"

"I wake up easy." Just the tip of his foot was visible around the corner; Sora scooched closer so he was on the same side of the wall as Hayner. "What'd your arm ever do to you?"

"Nothing. It was just itchy."

Slowing the frantic rubbing down, Hayner moved the rag across his chest again, down over his hips, and on his back as best he could. He hadn't seen his own reflection for a while (unless you counted windows at night), didn't know how people saw him. He looked down at his torso, fancied that he was thick enough, worried he looked emaciated or bloated like those orphans in Africa on the old TV ads.

"Is this the first time you've actually washed in here?" Sora leaned his head against the wall and wound his fingers in the chain. "Hasn't it been nine days?"

"I'm usually not awake before anyone else."

"So?"

"So, it would be weird, taking off your clothes and getting a sponge bath with a ton of girls in the room with you."

At which Sora laughed and wrapped his arms around his own bare stomach, shaking his head and staring out the window. He stopped for a while, started again, looked at Hayner. "That's funny," he said. "That you still care about that. Nobody really cares about that sort of thing now."

"Yeah, well." Hayner laughed, too. "I just feel like once I stop caring, then that's it, you know?" You've sunk all the way down. Like those hookers who had sex with guys right out in the open, since they didn't want to pay for a hotel.

"I know," Sora replied. "I get that. It's just you don't see that very often now."

Hayner copied him and wrapped his hands around his stomach, staring out the window, not-staring at Sora. This one time at summer camp when he was nine, there'd been this kid who looked almost exactly like Pence, only he had brown hair. It was so weird. The first time Hayner saw the guy he'd called out to him, "Hey Pence!" and felt betrayed and embarrassed when he turned around. Fake Pence. He'd refused to talk to the kid even once the whole time at camp, too, like it was that guy's fault he looked like Hayner's friend.

Hayner was also mad at Sora, for looking like Roxas-who-lived-with-a-Rich-Man. Like since Roxas was a backstabbing asshole that made Sora one for looking like him. Hayner wasn't stupid. He knew. He knew Axel was one of those guys who acted like feudal lords, letting people farm off his land in return for his share of food.

(He was so confused by that. Why couldn't the people have the land to themselves? Who said Axel owned it besides a piece of paper? Why would they bother giving him that food? Did he have guards, threats? What kept them in check? Why didn't everyone just get rid of the taker who wouldn't give? It was like a horrible history lesson with no test at the end.)

There was the dark little part of his mind he didn't touch. The confused sad little part. Mostly he was okay, actually, because it was surprising how much you could get used to if you were detached enough. You could take everything in stride. It was sort of nice.

_"So…so we'll uh, see you around, then."_

_"Yeah. I guess." It was weird, seeing your rival and his cronies after all this crap, them acting like it was normal to just greet you and ask how you were all doing. That old animosity faded dully. How silly it was to accuse Seifer Almasy of being a fat-ass idiot now, that sort of thing. Because you were just so relieved to see someone you knew, to know that the people who had been before were now._

_"See you eventually, chickenwuss," Seifer shoved his hands in his pockets._

_"Mm. Yeah," with a little smile and a wave, Hayner let him go and followed Olette down the other end of the street. Four in a group was good. Down to three and you still did fine. Add another three into that entourage and you had too many to deal with._

_Still, though. That was always how he worked, wasn't it? Some part of Hayner wanted to cling onto Seifer – wanted – Seifer to cling onto him, God, he didn't know – to acknowledge I Have A Connection With You I Don't Have With Anyone Else. You could be honest with your enemy the way you couldn't with your friend, you could tell him what bugged you about him because you wouldn't have to see him until you fought again._

_He didn't do anything, of course. There was some rule in Hayner's mind that didn't come from how he was raised or a past trauma or anything, but had just been there as long as he had. You didn't show you were attached to people in case they weren't attached to you. You said "bye" like you didn't care at all, and if he cared to ask you to stay, then let him do the asking._

_Hayner let Seifer walk away that time. He didn't want to ever have to be the one chasing anybody. Because people who tried too hard fell really hard, too._

Seifer loved to say crap like that. "The good thing about being a pessimist, Chickenwuss, is that you're always either right, or pleasantly surprised! Win-win, see?"

If you were detached enough from all the crap then you could adjust to anything. 'Cause it didn't actually really affect you. You could let your friends abandon you and be okay because they weren't really all that important to your wellbeing, and you had other things to do.

"Sorry, hang on," Sora stood up and leaned backwards, hands on his hips, stretching. "This is stupid. I can't remember your name."

"Hayner," Hayner said.

"That was it! I remember thinking that it almost sounded like it could be a normal name, like it's kinda like most names, only it's different." He wrinkled his nose. "God, don't listen to me. I'm not very coherent right now."

"Haha." His laugh was about as enthusiastic as he could make it sound.

He twisted the cloth in his hands, making little loops with his fingers until Sora leaned down and took it from him. "I'll do your back," he said, "Hold still."

_Turn around, I gotta talk to you. _Hayner shivered and didn't move.

"So what's the deal, anyways?"

"What with?"

"You and that guy. I mean, I know little groups were common for kids in the first couple of years, but they always disbanded, didn't they? Everyone disagrees? I haven't seen two people going together for a while, even before I got in here."

Hayner snorted and unconsciously leaned forward, away from Sora's hand on his back. Sora didn't notice, or didn't care; kept washing. "Then why do you keep talking about that Riku guy?"

"That's different. That's not survival, we're gonna fix things. What was his name again?"

"Seifer."

"Why do you stick with Seifer?"

There were about a million reasons Hayner could've given, of course, but they were all sort of long and involved, and the kind of thing that was easy to imagine but hard to describe. He was maybe a little embarrassed, actually. It reminded him of his piano teacher. Practice practice practice all week until you had it just right, but when it came to showing Mr. Labelle, you couldn't get your fingers to move right and he corrected something you already knew how to do. It was embarrassing to try and explain to someone and have them not understand. It was just easier to euphemize.

"I guess it's…I dunno. Two pairs of eyes."

It was habit more than anything else.

"Oh."

"You sound disappointed!" Hayner laughed and that was when Sora pulled away, wrung the cloth out over the basin; the loss of Sora's warm-blooded hand left the water on his back uncomfortably cool. He a little bit pretended he was stepping out of the shower and into the less humid air. That feeling.

"Yeah. I kinda figured you guys – "

"We what?"

"I dunno. I thought you were gonna say it was because you were friends or 'cause you didn't want to be alone. Not because it was easier."

Hayner shrugged, because he was the kind of guy who didn't like disappointing people, or something (because it was easier if they liked you more than you liked them, because it was easier, if you didn't care about anything at all, to leave it behind, because it was easier to have the pachydermatous skin of the kings of the apocalypse).

(Because dreams come true if your dreams are small enough, and you make sure they're easier, too.)

Standing up, he stretched to one side and looked down at Sora, cross-legged, staring up at him with a slack mouth and raised eyebrows. Not Roxas, not Roxas, you can't hate him because you hate Roxas.

"Well," he had the tone of an excuser, "We're not…friends, really."

* * *

People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar.  
**- Thich Nhat Hanh**

**

* * *

**

The back of Seifer's skull hurt. He'd always thought about pain as some tangible thing that flowed through you. Everywhere, all the time. And it had peaked at the base of his head, pulsing dully and worse when he shook it around. He wanted to dissipate the hurt by shaking it out.

Hayner would call it dark-yellow-red, not hurty. Fucker probably had synesthesia. He thought everything was colors, he thought he was colors, not the normal 'my shirt is black' way. He thought feelings were colors.

Honestly, Hayner could probably taste sounds, and hear feelings, too. Did feelings get mixed up when you had synesthesia? Probably. He only knew what synesthesia was 'cause it was in a sci-fi book he read, anyways. Didn't matter, anyways.

Haha. "Doesn't matter how the gun works as long as it shoots bullets." That's how he'd thought.

"We're not…friends, really," was the first thing he heard when he cracked open his eyes, facing in Hayner's direction, of-fucking-course.

The pain of injustice and cruelty wasn't really there, if you didn't think of most other people as human, so this was his main problem.

Ha! How Hayner to think that. _We're not friends._ No wonder who he was talking about. No wonder he didn't think Seifer was his friend, probably too defensive if he couldn't be the leader. Pissed Seifer off, actually. The guy wasn't any good at this surviving in the real world crap, but he got mad at Seifer for keeping him alive? The fuck? Whose fault was that, chickenwuss?

Just because you didn't have your sheltered-ass little possy following you around, just 'cause you realized- .

He wasn't wearing a shirt. His tiny arms, his skinny chest, that one barely discernible line of muscle down his stomach that told you he wasn't a kid anymore, the narrow hips that told you he didn't eat much, the proud shoulders, all on display. And the light coming through the window, glancing off his face while he stared out. Must be lonely.

Somehow Seifer could remember that moment of fifteen-year-old honesty, of heartbreak at losing the last in your group. _Do you dream, Seifer? Do you ever remember what you dream?_

He wondered what had changed since then, or if anything had.

What Seifer missed about Fuu was that when you were really sad, she'd say one word, like "Sorry," and hug you from behind. Girls were like that, even if they were girls like Fuu. They understood things, and it was okay to hug a girl, 'cause that didn't make you a fag.

Not that that mattered anymore.

Seifer felt bad that sometimes he considered selling out, or selling Hayner out, to the Rich Men. If anyone else called them that, he didn't know, but that was how he thought of them: the Rich Men in their towers. He thought, it couldn't be so bad, being a pet. You got perks, you got a place to sleep, even if it was with a pervert he couldn't be there all the time. And the window was closing for them, may as well get in on it while they could or – something.

He didn't really think he'd do it, of course. It was far beyond what he could understand doing. It was a book solution, it was a Deus ex Machina. It was a stupid sexy solution, and an excuse for some young girl to fall in love with some inexplicably young and handsome and rich man, as per usual.

There it was, though, in his imagination. Not a young handsome guy (and they were all guys, somehow, every single one was a man – at least, so far – maybe it times of crisis people – he didn't know, because they weren't leaders). But a little more realistic, add a touch of fantasy. Mid-thirties, early forties, starting to grey at the temples; a little chubby from under work, fat from abuse of the few people unlucky enough to be roped into the farms; guilty about paying a boy for sex but excited by the novelty; handsy, smiling. Seifer would think about something else to get hard, think about whatever worked while chapped hands closed around his body.

Lie back and think of England.

He snorted.

The thing was that Seifer, himself, wasn't the best candidate for it – too muscular for the real perverts, too boyish for the gays.

Hayner, on the other hand.

That was why he was starting to hate himself. Because he had one person, really (acquaintances didn't count, the kind of people you asked to get you a piece of food in exchange for labor), and even that person he was willing to whore out for a little more stability.

He stared at Hayner's proud shoulders, at the mouth which never called him friend. So Seifer groaned and rolled over onto his face, inhaling the must and dust of the green room carpet, ignoring the sharp pangs of light coming through the window, glancing off his head.

* * *

"You aren't?" Sora stood up suddenly, blocking the noise of Seifer's groan and his rollover with the creak of his cable-chain, whatever it was. However long he'd been in there, it had been enough to make Sora's legs shake just a little when he stood up, to nearly atrophy the muscles in his calves.

Hayner shrugged and looked for something to dry off his back (and his front, now that he thought of it). He could use his shirt, but that seemed like it would defeat the purpose. Shivering, he wrapped his arms around his torso and turned around to let the sunlight warm his skin instead.

What a nasty thought he thought, then.

_I know it's bad. I know I should be angry or worried or afraid of what will happen, and how I will survive, or how I'll even get out of this fucking room and away from that pink-haired asshole._

_But the sky is so empty and perfect and beautiful._

He found it funny the way that technology destroying itself fixed shit. Did that mean technology fixed shit, if it was fixing itself? If you got rid of yourself, why bother being there in the first place? Of course, if he went down that road, he came to the stupid conclusion that life was pointless anyways (you're gonna die anyways). He dismissed the thought from his head, because there was no good to come from thinking around in circles anyways.

"Hayner?"

_Don't say my name_, he almost snarled, but this wasn't Roxas. He said it the same though, said Hayner's name the same way. Funny world, wasn't it? Maybe there weren't enough faces to go around.

"Sorry! I zoned out."

Sora laughed nervously and shifted his weight to his unshackled foot, wincing. "I figured. What do you have to think about?"

Shrug. "Same things everyone thinks about, I guess."

"Like what?"

Nosy guy. "Like, I'm cold, and I want to leave."

"Oh. Yeah, that seems about right."

This amazed him sometimes, down to the bones in his bones: their way of life had ended, the closest thing to a city he knew of was a feudal plantation, transportation gone, communication gone, but he still managed awkward moments all the freaking time. It was borderline impressive, actually. If he had gotten a high school education he might have had more to say on the subject, but as it was he didn't know how to put it.

"Um," he'd almost forgotten how to make conversation. "But, so how long have you been in here, again?"

"You already asked me that!" Sora laughed and stretched weird, putting his hands on his hips and bending backwards.

"I did? Sorry."

"A few months. And it's fine."

How long had it been for them? Eight days, nine days? Little things ran through the veins in his legs, itchy energy at being held still for so long. His brain floated in his head, severed from rationality.

With awful timing, Seifer hissed, "Psst! Lamer! What're you doing over there? Put on a shirt!" Sora sat down and waved goodbye.

"Yeah, yeah."

Tugging his black tee over his head (the inside of it still smelled like sweat and dirt, and he felt dirty again), Hayner made his way over to Seifer and sat down cross-legged. "What is it?"

"Huh?"

"Didn't you want me over here?"

"Oh. Yeah, I guess."

"What for?"

His hair had been pushed back, flattened against one side of his head, a long red crease on his cheek from where he'd slept on his arm, paralleling the scar on his face. He rolled his eyes. "I dunno."

"Kay."

There was a long, awkward pause between the two of them, winding and curling around Hayner's neck. Five years or whatever it had been (he was saying five years, anyways), and he still felt around Seifer the way grade schoolers felt around upperclassmen. You just tried to impress them and make them think you were cool for a little kid; you weren't honest, you didn't say what you thought. Like an older brother. He didn't want Seifer to think he was stupid; if Seifer thought he was _stupid_ then he had the upper hand. No fair.

Hayner's boots pinched his feet. Made sense that they would – only fair that they would. He'd stolen them off a sleeping homeless guy, after all. Like hermit crabs.

"I got an idea," Seifer said, not looking at anything but the floor, moving a little closer with his conspiratorial whisper. "To get out, I think."

A thrill of blue hope streaked through his center. "You do?"

"Maybe. You know that guy, the one with the weird hair over one of his eyes? The young one?"

"Yeah. Mister don't-blame-me." (Always giving them guilty looks, always trying to justify his work.)

"Exactly."

Hayner rolled his eyes as the flutter in his stomach died, joining the other corpses. They were starting to pile up. "I don't think just 'cause he's feeling kind of guilty he'll actually help us escape, Seifer."

"I'm not saying _that_." Seifer glared at him, playing with a fray in the carpet.

"What are you saying then?"

"Just that – God, are you seriously still mad at me?" The surprising thing was that – suprising things were – that for one, Seifer actually cared enough to ask, and that for two, all that time together and Seifer still couldn't read him. It was a forced companionship in every sense of the word.

Hayner wanted to say what he'd said to his mother as he entered his rebellious phase, time and time again. _Well, no, I'm not mad at you, but the fact that you keep insisting that I am is kind of making me._

Instead he chewed on his lip and muttered, "No. Keep going."

"I'm not saying he'll help us. It's just, I get the feeling that…that if we tried something, he wouldn't _stop_ us, you know?" The reanimated streak of hope sputtered inside of him, in his gut, flitting around when Seifer looked at him with serious eyes. It was like they were conspiring to cheat on a test in school, tricking the principle. That sort of crazy, it would only ever work in a movie, let's build a four-story treehouse when we grow up with all the money we'll have idea. What if it didn't work? It couldn't, it didn't make sense, banking on the guilt of some guy to keep from calling them out when they ran. What happened when they got caught, got killed?

"Well…what, what did you think – were you thinking of?"

Seifer pursed his lips, traced circles on the ground. "I…dunno, exactly. But I think I know how to get out of here, so if we bolt past him…I mean, he's a little guy."

"That's your genius plan?"

"For now, yeah." He brought his pretzel legs up to crouch, arms around his knees. "Sorry."

Which put Hayner off, really. A lot. Seifer apologizing for having a bad idea.

"What's that for?"

"I have a headache. God, shut up." Hayner turned his head to the side and grit his teeth, hardly surprised by Seifer's immediate reaction. He stared off at one of the girls, the pink one, Sora's friend, sleeping curled up in a corner. Her skirt rode up over her skinny, pale legs, and the curling up made it really easy to see the curve of her underwear. She was white and clean and sexy.

He didn't feel anything. He tried to imagine holding her, bending down to kiss her collarbone, running his hands down her hips and onto her butt, softly touching one of her breasts. Nothing but nothing.

Sad state when you were so detached you couldn't even muster up the energy to fantasize about sex with a pretty girl.

What he missed a lot, too, on top of all those other things God there were so many things he thought his head would explode with the effort of remembering it all – what he missed was people caring about him, asking him if he was okay, if he needed anything, how his day was. He wondered if Seifer ever wanted things like that; he wondered if Seifer ever thought about girls. Probably. He probably did.

He wondered if he should ask if Seifer was okay. But he didn't anyways.

* * *

Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for - in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it.  
- **Ellen Goodman**

**

* * *

**

Mister don't-blame-me brought them lunch that day, peering through the window of the green room door, his plaid shirt buttoned all the way up to the collar.

The faceless girls, the ones he'd decided to ignore, all got into various states of excitement; standing up, moving closer towards the door, sitting straighter. Hayner couldn't help but wonder what this room was for; were the girls that important, if they left three teenage boys alone with them? Would they be trapped in here long?

"I'm gonna need you guys to back away from the door, okay?" said Zexion, because he knew that was the man's name (though he didn't feel like such a spineless ass deserved it), opening the door a crack. "You know the drill. Thanks." He sounded like a camp counselor.

The door opened all the way, wide and gaping, and he pulled in a cart of food from who-knew-where, wheeling it to the center of the room.

There was a key hanging around his neck. It was tied with some yarn, or something; obviously hand-made and simplistic. The key had grey plastic on top, encasing the actual metal. A little logo in the grey plastic. And the metal shone when it hit the light, bright and unnatural.

So Hayner didn't know what really made him do it. The guilt for losing the knife, the anger at getting locked up for no reason, the desperate need to prove to Seifer that he was just as good at this whole survival thing. He darted forward before he knew what he was doing, because if he said he'd do it on the count of three he just _wouldn't_, and his hand was out and around that key, his fingers brushed against the hardness of the man's sternum (God, it was like he never touched other human beings anymore), closing over it in a claw, _yanking_ hard. He watched mister sympathy's head jerk forward, thought he imagined the rope breaking, thought he imagined the snap and worried he'd killed a man.

It was over fast. Leap, grab, fumble, yank, leap back. "_Hey_!"

"Hayner!" It was Seifer who shouted (who else?), grabbing his arm and pulling Hayner behind him and to the side, other hand out protectively.

Something like hatred or trepidation curled in Hayner's stomach, that schoolboy fear of getting yelled at by your favorite teacher. He stared at Zexion from behind Seifer's arm, clutching the key in his hand like it might really open something, letting the string dangle downwards. He inched forward, just a little, allowed himself to let his chest touch Seifer's arm. To prove they were connected.

"Hey!" shouted mister guilt again, maybe a little quieter.

Call it Stockholm Syndrome, or maybe just giving a shit about someone other than himself or Seifer, but the guy was a painful sort of pretty. When he stared at them with his wide eyes, still hunched forward where the tug had pulled him, panting. His mouth open, his hand over his chest, other hand clenched in a fist. And God the way he stared at them, eyes tight, how his mouth hung in an open snarl; the_something_ that was there in his eyes.

He relaxed his face, then, let it fall down until he stood straight and laughed bitterly. It was a long, slow process. His newly smooth face was out of place with Hayner's heartbeat like the blades of a helicopter. "Hey," Zexion said, it seemed to himself, "Those are my car keys." He laughed again and shook his head, abandoning the tray of food and heading for the door.

"How am I gonna get home without my car keys!" he shouted, turning to look at them with a mirthless, maniac smile before slamming the door and locking it again.

* * *

The nice thing about being a pessimist is that you are constantly either being proven right or pleasantly surprised.  
- **George F. Will**

* * *

Zexion leaned against the door and stared at the framed poster on the other end of the hall, one of those remake vintage sci-fi movies from the fifties that all had named like _The Thing from Above_ or _The Mysterians_ or _Monsters from Space_.

Must be nice, putting a name to the thing you're fighting. Another laugh. Over a decade and he had yet to rid himself of the last vestiges of English minor.

Must be nice, being in that green room, hating the obvious, protecting each other.

He scrunched his hands against the cool wood of the door, fingertips in, fingertips out, brushing the sweat off his hands.

_Ha-ha!_ Like a triumphant older brother, _Good for you! Dammit._ He shivered and tried to remember what else he had to do that day, what else that man was going to make him do. Stoke that boiler in the basement (why call it a boiler if all it did was burn wood?), he knew that much already; the rest was dependent on the will of Marluxia.

Who made him imprison little girls in the hope they'd be useful one day.

Who made him imprison broken teenagers to pretend they'd done something bad.

Who made him make believe he was doing the right thing.

Who made him think that the only way to fix anything anymore was to obey one person, no matter what he told you to do.

Who made him pretend that everything was going to be okay.

He'd been trying to make himself feel better about it, lately. The world was fucked anyways! May as well do what you could, insure that _you'd_ survive, at least. So he beat his head against the wall,_thunkthunkthunk_ until it was hard for him to think anymore, and licked his lips. That was what: he kept thinking about what he'd done so far, what he was going to do.

Zexion was too busy for friends in high school. There had been a poster on the wall of the gym, one of those stupid "different kinds of wellness" things that told you how to deal with stress and all. It was full of bullshit, of course – because nobody took them seriously if you saw them everywhere – but it had said, about schoolwork, that your best bet was to study solo. He'd never been good at finding the middle way (that was a hoot, the middle way, he'd known a Buddhist once before the guy'd been killed). Did things to the extremes.

You should've seen him play piano. All he could do was loud or quiet. If you told him to be a little louder he'd bang on the keys like he was mad at them, he'd make such loud noises you would worry the strings would break; tell him to back off a smidge and all of a sudden you couldn't even tell whether or not he was making any noise at all.

So no real friends in school, forfeited for grades. Paid off, of course, since he did get into a good college, top of his class. His path was laid out for him like a crystal railway:

_crack_.

Haha. Shit. Maybe those kids were better off after all, anyways; what were they, twelve years old when it happened? Ten? Fuck. Young enough that it didn't matter. Young enough that the wholes of their short lives would be an adventure.

It was almost remarkable the way he had found stability even here. And he kept reeling back on Marluxia's words, rolling his ears around them and listening hard. _Your eyes don't see anything, do they?_

_crack._

He ran a quick hand through his hair, frizzing around the edges like a thin blue halo, and began to walk toward his boss's office. Environmental science, at this point, meant nothing to him: again that falsely poetic air flitted in his mind, and he still found himself trying to think of the words with the best effect. He played the conversation in his mind, imagined what Marluxia would say, what he would do. The best retaliations, or when to shut up. As futile as that was.

Which was why, when he came upon the door, a nice rich cherry wood with a mocking label ("director") at eye-level, he hesitated before knocking.

Before he even saw Marluxia's face, before the door had even finished opening, "I'm leaving."

His face was broad, tan, freckled. Angled handsomely and in confusing contrast to that hair, mauve and chunky. His eyes were expressive. They were sharp. Often, when they spoke, Zexion kept his eyes fixed on his collarbone instead.

Marluxia raised his eyebrows, keeping his mouth steady. Zexion almost wanted to retract it, to unsay his sentence, cowardly as he was. "Well," the words were lilting. "I suppose you'd better come in."

If there was anything he'd learned about their boss man it was he had a mouth more venomous than a snake's. He could make you regret your words as you were speaking them, draw your tongue back behind your teeth; he could twist your words to what he needed them to mean and make anyone sound like an idiot. In minutes he unwound your entire argument, pulled you to say his words without ever saying them himself. He could make you do anything for him. With him.

Which was why Zexion wanted to leave right away, and why he was unsure why he'd bothered to come and say this. Get it overwith. More like he simply didn't want to undertake anything entirely alone. What was he hoping for? An okay? A smile and a gold star?

But he entered the room with his face schooled as he could get it, glad one eye was obscured by dark hair bleached with sunlight. And he tried to pretend it was fine what he was doing. He tried to pretend he wasn't about to get killed or something, and ignored the poisonous stare on the back of his neck because he _knew_ that man was – knew he was – planning something, or thinking things that Zexion could not understand or plan or think, and so Zexion himself was questioning his reasons before he'd even begun to explain them.

He sounded like a principle when he sat down in his office chair, stolen from the broken lawyer's office across the street. "Zexion, Zexion, Zexion." Tut-tut-tut. You would be hard pressed to remember they were the same age. "You never fail to fascinate me, my friend. Every time I think I know what you're up to you prove me wrong."

So condescending, he sounded! Like he was making a mockery of his thoughts. "Don't patronize me, Liu-maru."

Narrowed eyes, suddenly, and gave Zexion a sense of brief triumph (like screaming in delight on your way down a broken roller coaster). "You don't call me that. Zexion," he laughed, a tenor noise that shook the air in the room like shaking out a dusty bed sheet. He frowned. "You'll ruin it." They fell into the sort of silence that was nothing but baited traps, and, "You must remember that from the lectures, at least. Clean cuts, _Zexion_. They heal faster, _Zexion_."

The room had yellow walls.

"So you're leaving?"

"Yes."

"When?"

"Now."

Another chuckle. "Bringing nothing with you?"

"Nothing to take."

"You wound me." He put a hand to his chest and clutched at the black shirt there right over his heart. "Humor me. Why?" A new seriousness.

Zexion licked his lips and leaned up against the wall, ankles touching. "I keep asking myself why I follow you. And why you do what you do. I can't come up with a reason for myself, and – "

"And me? Why am I how I am?" This time his laugh was quieter, and it was boxed in and soft around the edges, and Zexion fancied that maybe it was a real question under there.

And, ah, here was the kicker. "You're doing it for fun, aren't you?"

"Is that a question?"

He could not imagine ever having banter with someone like Marluxia. "Tell me why. It won't change my decision. But I want to know." If only to prove to me, Marluxia, that there is something inside of you still.

"You wouldn't understand." Jaw clenched, eyes averted, and so suddenly sad, and God, it was _hard_ to remember they were supposed to be the same age! "Honestly." He crossed his legs and held his head up proudly, staring out the window at what could have passed for a decrepit, functional convenience store. He rested his hands on the arms of the chair.

"You must be so depressed, holed up in here. It must be such a drain on you – "

"Shut up!" he hissed. "You _stop talking_, Zexion, you stop talking right now. Sitting around complaining about how awful I am, it must be so easy." Sneering, "That's what I always noticed about you environmentalists. You complain about the world slowly dying and us overpopulating it, but that never stops you from taking hot showers or having babies, does it? Don't talk to me about doing things for _fun_. You – haha! – you seem so smart, you know. You're a child, Zexion, you're an absolute child." This was what: it always came down to Marluxia thinking he was better than you, and convincing you of it.

"I thought I was your favorite?" he hissed back defensively.

"That's the sad part." Schooling his face back again, Marluxia began to observe his knuckles. There was a dent on the back of his neck, Zexion noticed, where a mole had been clipped. "But oh well. There will always be people like you, Zexion." (He said his name different. Wrong. He said 'Zecks-shun', not 'Zecks-ee-on'.) He pinched the bridge of his nose in a show of exasperation. "Please wait outside for a few minutes. I need to – gather some things and we can discuss this further." _Gather myself_.

* * *

As soon as Zexion got outside Marluxia's room, he inhaled through his nose narrowly and bumped his forehead against the wall. He closed his eyes. It had been over much faster than he'd anticipated, and he hadn't gotten to say any of what he'd really wanted to say – it was, of course, his boss who ended up vocalizing his thoughts, who backed Zexion into a corner, but that was how it had always been. Zexion preferred to do things from behind the scenes. He liked to manipulate with just words and not actions. And so, use-it-or-lose-it took place in his body, which he refused to use as a tool. He had shrunk, it seemed, since that time, and could no longer cut an imposing figure.

It took him a few moments listening to some of the murmurs outside before he began to run, down the hall, past the window which looked out onto a curiously untouched baseball field, past the broken copy machine, past the empty and torn cork board, the old theater props they hadn't found a use for, and down the stairs through the double-doors opening the hinged metal outer doors and slamming the handle down behind him, and out into the forest which was slowly regaining its footing all the while his legs aching with every strained push and his heart trying to push its walls out and explode with blood and trying not to nightmare. In all his nightmares he ran away from something and it caught him because he gave up, because if he gave up he could at least say he wasn't bested because he could say it was on his own terms. He stopped running and turned around, backing away still and hand out behind him to feel for trees.

* * *

"Yeah? You want me to do somethin'?"

"It's Zexion."

"Ha! Oh, fuck, I _knew_ he'd be the first to snap! So what do I do?"

"…frankly, Xigbar – I'm disappointed you have to ask."

"You okay, there? You're kinda – "

"I'm fine, Xigbar. Do your job."

* * *

That was how it happened. Marluxia following Xigbar, who held a gun in either hand and a detached grin. God. God, Zexion hated that man so much.

It took only a glint of shining black metal and the reality of _bang_ to get Zexion to stumble further back, trying to remember where that deer trail was, and his eyes met Marluxia's so briefly it was painful because he could just almost maybe imagine the look of a strangled prince of pessimism in there.

"Oy! Better start runnin', shrimpy! I've been wantin' to do this for a long time!"

Refusing to rise to the challenge, Zexion darted behind a tree where his knees stiffened and he found himself unable to move again. _I'll run further into the forest on the count of ten. And I won't stop, even if I give up. I'll run until he shoots me. I'll run until I die._

This plan seemed somehow better.

_Ten…nine…_

"What, not even gonna give me a good chase? Bolt like the bunny you are, man! No gettin' away anyways!"

_Eight, sevensix – dammit…_

"The world ain't gonna run out of bullets for a long time, _Ienzo_!"

Zexion tripped, fell down on his face, stood up and ran at the same time so that he was closer to the ground now, somehow. And somehow he found those old rotting train tracks and he followed them, he ran and he ran and he ran and ignored the madman shouting and the bullets. And the world became nothing but the breath in his ears, and the darting eyes looking at his forward path, and the thumpathumpa of his heart telling him he was going to die.

_Thumpathumpa._

_Can you feel my heartbeat, Ie? Listen. I've always said the best things happen more than once. Like TV shows, or sex, or heartbeats. Listen._

_

* * *

_

A/N: Well this was basically the world's biggest bitch to format just now. DID YOU HEAR THAT, FF? YOU ARE THE OARFISH OF FORMATTING.

So how was your day.


	3. Deserted Places

A/N: You know those kids who like, define themselves by their grades in school? Like, the more people you beat, the better you are or the more you're worth? I dunno. I've been running into some of those people lately. I'm starting to see them as a sort of unavoidable natural disaster.

Anyways. I wrote at least sixty percent of this like, in public, and disjointedly, which is probably really bad?

WAIT WAIT WAIT

BEFORE YOU LEAVE

...

okay so you know those moments when you raise your hand and the teacher calls on you and you're like "uhhh I forgot can you come back to me" and you remember like THREE SECONDS LATER? I...I will get back to you.

* * *

**The Snake is Sitting on the Throne, the King is Hissing in the Tree.**

* * *

_"I have no more clear packaging tape left. Oh my dear and undying love of adhesive. What would my locker look like without you? It would be a tragedy. I'm starving, but I don't want food." _  
- Zoe Trope, _Please Don't Kill the Freshman_

_

* * *

_

The strangest hunger had settled itself in his stomach. Hollow. He imagined it was the void where his energy had been. Because he didn't want food, exactly, or water, but if he was full enough it was a hollow sort of full. Like he wanted something, physically. A hunger without hunger. He had no name for it. It coiled in his sternum like a snake eating its own tail.

Zexion stopped running and stared straight ahead, at the house he saw through the trees, and at the house next to that one, and the empty asphalt road next to that one. And he tripped over a rotting train track and righted himself.

_There was a suburb an hour's run from there this whole time?_

Maybe it was – one of those places where half the stuff had been left behind.

Stuff like _metal_ and _matches_ and _kindling_, and fans and wires and salvageable parts from cars - ! Stuff he could _use_.

Just so long as they couldn't find him. And who would, all the way out here?

* * *

Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.  
- **Edgar Allen Poe**

**

* * *

**

As soon as the door slammed shut Seifer brought his defensive hands down again, panting just slightly from the excitement. And he met Hayner's eyes with wild ones and whooped, pumping his fist in the air triumphantly. "You crazy bastard!" he shouted, punching Hayner's shoulder. "Oh, you crazy ass! Ha! I could fuckin' kiss you!"

"It's just a _key_," Hayner muttered sheepishly.

"One more key than we had before," Seifer said, laying his hand on Hayner's back. "Sure as hell can't hurt, can it? Lemme see."

Cupping his fingers around it, Hayner let the key slide into Seifer's palm. Protectively, like it was breakable, or like someone would steal it.

He immediately missed memorizing that shape with his fingers, and watched hungrily as Seifer held it up to the light, ran his thumb over the indented plastic H on the top, the logo of the company, down the chinked metal of the side. It really was just a car key. It didn't even have any of those buttons that locked the car from far away.

"I broke one of these once," Seifer said lowly. "It was from a rental car company, too, so my mom was really pissed. I didn't even break the important part. Just the – plastic…"

"What's inside?"

"Huh? Well, nothing weird, but the metal was shaped funny. But I bet we could – hang on, can we switch shoes for a sec?"

"Why?"

"Never mind, I can probably do it with these." Seifer squeezed the key tight in his own hand and dropped it on the ground while Hayner, instinctively, looked around to see if anyone was watching. They weren't. Perhaps key stealing was a commonplace thing with these people.

_CRACK!_ which did get their attention.

"What the _fuck_ are you _doing_, Seifer!"

"Calm down, will ya? I just broke the plastic like I said I would!" He hadn't said anything about doing it _now_, but fine. Fine, Seifer, step on Hayner's new stolen key and break it to see what's inside, sure. Seifer lifted up his boot, shaking it to get out the shards of textured grey plastic, and witnessed the fruits of his labor.

"Checkitout, lamer." He grinned and stooped down to pick it up. "'S our own little multi-tool in here."

"It's a lump of metal," Hayner scoffed. "It's not even sharp!"

"Sure is sharp one way." And that was when Seifer held up the key to freedom, the key side being truly and completely useless. Inside was a flat pancake of metal, connected to the blade of the key; and it was thin and shining with a dull luster. And, yes, when you looked at it from the side it was really very thin, and really very sharp, he imagined, if you tried to cut something with it. "Looks like you got me a new knife. Tiny-ass one, of course, won't cut paper or nothing, but hey. We got us a knife, Hayner."

Hayner tried to hide how much he liked that he said 'we' the second time.

He sat down on his butt, wondering how, though, a two-centimeter-long hardly-sharp blade was going to help them in any way, fingering a chunk of plastic. Looking to the side yielded the unfortunate sight of three girls, all against the wall the same way, their knees bent and touching. One leaned her head against another's shoulder, and she reciprocated by putting her head against that head. They all three looked quite sleepy.

The more awake one, whose head did not lean on anything, noticed Hayner staring and offered him a dubious smile. Hayner dubious smiled back. "Hey," he said, though he didn't know if she could hear. If she could, she didn't respond; her eyes slid shut and she leaned her head against the wall.

Seifer, across from him, pinched that key and looked at it, one side then the other, then the first again. Car keys, unlike house keys, it seemed, did not have sharp enough teeth to do much. Like a thick piece of metal had been engraved on either side but not in the middle; any sharpness was blocked.

"Quit botherin' the girls," he muttered. "I told you, interacting with them might be dangerous."

There had been this one summer. The summer, as Hayner referred to it, when You Learned You Could Die. He figured out that going outside could get you run over or beat up or lost and alone, that it could get you bitten by mosquitoes with West Nile Virus and ticks with Rocky Mountain Fever, that you could be stalked or murdered or die of hunger and thirst, that a tree could fall over and crush you or a giant octopus might eat you if you went to the beach. He'd hardly left the town. Barely left his house he was so scared. And though by the end of the summer he had been okay, Hayner was now starting to think that he hadn't so much gotten over it as learned to ignore it. And he was starting to wonder, more and more, if that was how all big problems went.

"So how's a knife help us now? Not much to cut besides carpet and hair as far as I can tell."

"Dunno. Hey Ginger!"

The redhead, Sora's friend, jumped a little in the corner and met his eyes. "What." They must've been talking about something, her and her little boyfriend, because she seemed angrier than usual.

"You got any ventilation shafts here? You know, the little square things that open up into tubes. In the walls."

"Yeah, but they're covered up," Sora said helpfully, pointing to something in the far corner. "Been like that since before I got here. You can't get out that way; I tried. Only ventilation left in here is the cracks in the walls."

* * *

If Sora had tried, Hayner wondered how he had tried. But the two of them took naps that day, and come nightfall the mortal enemies of Twilight Town were crouched around what was left of the shaft opening, whispering so as not to wake anyone else up.

It had been more than covered. It had been locked down, bolted shut, frozen. A half-inch thick metal plate had been planted over the vent, and screws dotted the entire perimeter, painted over a neutral mint green to match the walls. It smelled like old paint, cracked like old paint with bubbles.

_How do you even **try** to get past that?_

Reaching up a chipped, worn fingernail, Hayner scratched at the coating around one of the screws, picking off drying flecks of paint.

"Any ideas?"

"Not really." He continued to clean the paint off the screw until shiny metal shone through; he'd been half hoping that it would turn out to be foam or wood or something else breakable underneath that. Trying to think like an adventure show, his mind drifted to crow bars and hard kicks armed with heavy black boots. Not useful, since they didn't have either of those things.

"Well…how do you usually get rid of some big hunk of metal?"

"Usually? They probably melt it off or weld it or something," Seifer said dismissively, rolling back on the balls of his feet until his butt plopped onto the ground. This was not as exciting as adventure shows. There wasn't a countdown or a bomb or a mutant dinosaur or anything, and they weren't even sure if escaping would work. Or if it was actually better out there.

"Can I see the knife?" Hayner asked, holding his hand out expectantly.

Handing it over nonchalantly, Seifer replied. "Sure. Why?"

"Uh. Dunno yet. I've got like, the beginnings of an idea, I guess."

"Okay." Unexpectedly laid back, he seemed.

Hayner ran his thumb around the edge of the silver thing, and really, it wasn't a knife. It was, if anything, comparable to the strip of metal that went down the middle of quality knifes. The kind sandwiched by the two pieces of wood that made up the handle. It was missing the blade on the other end.

_I could…scrape the rest of the paint off with the metal. Useful. I could…_in his mind the blade played over the plate, dream-like, doing whatever he could think of. Slashing little claw marks into the side. Engraving things. Running along the seam to separate the paint on the plate from the paint on the wall. Using it like a tiny crow bar to lift out some of the screws. It was too small to dent, really; it didn't have any weak points.

He tried the crow bar thing, leveling the metal under. He couldn't even get it far enough. It kept slipping out.

"Worth a try," Seifer commended him.

_Oh, gee, thanks. What I really need now, **Seif**, is your **fucking**__condescension. God, I miss having friends._

"Hn." The thing was that if they could have been friends, if there was any way they could have gotten along and realized they were just being petty, they would've done it already. However many years it'd been – they could've gotten over their little discrepancies in that time, in _years_ spent around each other. But they were simply – incompatible. They had to be. You couldn't go years being that close with someone and only then find out you could be fast friends. They had tried and failed to get along, and had come to terms with it.

Some people are like that.

Hayner looked at Seifer and distanced himself as well he could from what he thought about the guy. Looked at him as just…guy. Helpful guy who looked out for the both of them. Blond guy. Guy with the hat. Who liked to run his fingers across things to get a feel for them, like he did with buildings, and food, and places to sleep. He could imagine being friends with that guy, but Seifer just didn't seem interested. Maybe if Hayner acted like his old lackeys, but…he couldn't do that, either. He was too stubborn and Seifer didn't like him enough to interact with him beyond what was totally necessary.

Some people are like that.

"Wait," Hayner said, though Seifer hadn't made a move to do anything. "I might have a better idea." He slipped the thinness of the blade into the crack of the screw and twisted, as far as he could manage, until his fingers turned white with the effort. "Shit," he hissed, dropping it.

"Were you turning to the right? I'm pretty sure that to unscrew it you have to turn it to the left – "

"Yeah, I know." Taking a moment to remember his right from his left, Hayner flushed with the realization he'd been going to the right. "It's just stuck." He used the blade as a screw driver again, this time turning to the left. There was just the smallest amount of give, but…

"Here, you try," he handed the thing to Seifer. "My fingers hurt."

Seifer kept his eyes on Hayner for a second, wordless and indecipherable, before he snatched the key. "Whatever."

Things like that.

Years and years and they hardly knew each other at all.

Seifer went for the same screw as Hayner'd been working on, a tendon in his wrist straining as he twisted it. Triumph floated in the air around the crack of paint which arose around the screw, freeing it. The eventual turning looked slow and painful. "Damn, you're right," came the mutter. "This thing's really rusted in here."

"I _know_," Hayner grumbled, sitting back and taking it as an insult that Seifer had ever doubted him. Always _Are you sure, Hayner? Do you know what you're doing, Hayner? Are you certain you aren't just a total, complete fuck-up and that I don't need you? Yes? No? Let me check._

"_Oof_," Seifer grunted, suddenly jerking back and landing on his ass. There was a dull, muffled _clunk_. "One down."

Hayner picked up the loosened screw and ran his thumb over the threading; it was rough with rust and left a long red stain on his hand. "Gross."

"My hand's killing me. Switch off."

"Yeah. Gimme."

He was right about the pain; you had to twist so hard the edges of the metal dug into the palm of your hand. But God, it was so satisfying when it started to turn, the flesh of his hand white his bones sore and finally enough pressure that the paint cracked, outlining the edge of the screw, and it was so satisfying when it started to turn!

That was how they went, all night. Pain when the key dug into their hands, the muscles of their arms sore. And when it was Seifer's turn, Hayner just watched him secure in the knowledge his watching went unnoticed. He studied the way his accomplice's muscled bunched and how the fine tendons in his wrists grew taught; how, about halfway through, he couldn't do it without shaking a little bit. After a few breaks, during which they had nothing to talk about besides the different parts of their arms which hurt, it was Seifer who had the honor of getting out the last one. Naturally.

"Careful, careful!" Hayner hissed, looking behind him. "Don't just let it fall."

"Yeah, yeah." He didn't know how long it had been, but the rest of them might start waking up real soon. Maybe he was selfish. He didn't want them crawling after him or Seifer, piggybacking on their freedom.

With satisfying clunk number a million and a half, their impromptu screw driver absolutely warped and effectively useless, the last screw came out and the metal plate covering freedom – didn't budge.

"What the hell?" Seifer growled, prying at the corner. "Fuck! Why isn't it working?"

"They can't have welded it or anything," Hayner added. "There'd be no point to the bolts. Maybe they glued it?"

Pause. "Yeah, okay. You pull on that side, I'll pull on this."

Nodding, Hayner dug his fingers as well as he could around the edges, gripping with his fingernails. Thoughts of gangrene drifted into and out of his mind hazily. There was no way this worked anyways.

Through some nonverbal urge they started to pull at the same time, _krrshk_, and with a slight sticky sound the thing cracked off, taking some chunks of dry wall with it. Must have been rotten all the way through. Funny how things went like that.

There were four more screws, looser and untouched by any amount of mint green paint, keeping on the actual cover of the vent. Three minutes later they had gained their freedom, though it was dead and rotting from the inside out. The inside of the vent was so cold to the touch it burned, and older than the dust coating its every surface. The opening was just big enough for them, by some curious stroke of luck, which just made him more suspicious. _This can't possibly work. It's so fucking little kid._

* * *

And so, Seifer Almasy and Hayner Conway began to crawl down the freezing tunnel, away from one of their longest homes in the last few years. And again, they found themselves abandoning what little stability they'd had. In both boys settled the heavy knowledge that they would never see those people again. Sat weighty like a rock on top of a big fucking mountain, it did. What were their names? Did they have names, most of those girls? All Hayner could think of was that one girl, leaning against the wall with her two friends, and her twisted smile.

He crouched in the vent, Seifer behind him. Hands and knees, and though his pants gave him a little insulation, his palms were bare. It was crawling through a freezer choked with dust. It had not been so bad at first, not nearly, the sort of 'I can handle this' bullshit running through his head. But cold crept. It started as a thin sheet on the dead layer of your skin like an infection and tendrils spiraled upwards, cell by cell. The way that water could crack stone by freezing in a crevasse. He felt his skin crack with the cold, numb him in a bad way.

Scrch. They proceeded through shuffling. Put your arms forward, then pull the rest of your body, and hope you came to an opening at some point.

Seifer was the first to talk.

"Can we stop for a sec? I'm freezing."

"So?" Hayner's teeth were chattering, of course. "Keep moving. Keep your blood flowing. Stopping will make you c-colder."

"Just…" Seifer bit his lip and _thunk_, set his head against Hayner's hip. "Fuck, you're warm," he muttered. He snorted and moved to press his head on Hayner's thigh.

"What the hell!"

"What? It's helping both of us. Just hang on ten more seconds and be glad I'm not fondling your ass or whatever."

"Why the fuck would you _ever_ have to _fondle my ass_!" Hayner felt like he was about to start giggling wildly, like this was the grown-up version of bantering about homework with Olette. Seifer snorted and drew back.

"Okay. Keep moving now. There might be something up ahead."

"And once we do reach another vent that leads outside," Hayner said, having had this on his mind for a few minutes, "Which is, of course, covered by something or over which will be screwed on from the other side, how do you propose we _get the hell out of here_?"

He jolted his leg when Seifer flicked it, though trying to curl up on yourself was sort of impossible now, and said nothing in response to: "We'll get to it when we get to it."

God.

_Seifer._

* * *

They did get to it when they got to it, which was, in fact, much sooner than expected. They got to it within about fifteen minutes – and a good thing, too. Hayner's knees were so cold he couldn't feel them anymore; he had started to think they were popsicles. Or not attached to his body, or something. He was making up hideously morbid games that could only be played when you couldn't feel your skin anymore. Like, how many times did you have to bang your arm against a concrete pillar before you would start feeling pain in that extremity again? Or like, _how long can my right thigh last in a blazing fire before I have to pull it out_. Because Hayner's right thigh would really not mind being thrust into a blazing fire at the moment.

"Oh fuck," Seifer hissed. "Oh fuck, lamer, please tell me that's a vent opening up ahead. Please tell me that thing leads outside. I'm so cold my balls are in danger of freezing off."

"Nice imagery."

"Well, I'm just warning you 'cause I knew you'd miss them."

Resisting the childish urge to bang his head against the side of the vent, Hayner crawled a little faster towards what Seifer said was an exit – might've been an exit? Whatever it was was better than being stuck where they were.

Maybe.

Hahaha.

That was another thing Seifer liked to say. "This grass on the other side of the fence is only greener 'cause it's fake! I bet you anything. Stop complaining and eat your dumpster diving dinner."

Panting with the effort, he crawled like an Olympic inchworm. Ready to take the gold in escaping from freezing-ass vents. It grew closer by degrees, smaller, smaller, smaller degrees: he imagined it as a finish line, even if he wasn't racing anyone. It did not seem to get closer for the longest time.

Imagine unscrewing a bolt. They generally don't appear unscrewed until the fifth or sixth rotation. The exit, too, seemed very, very far away until it didn't anymore.

One and a half feet tall by two feet wide. Metal slits, looking out onto verydeadgrass and those little silver maple trees that never got big enough to be impressive. Was that a forest, or just a line of trees? He couldn't tell, and bobbing his head up or down to get a different angle just blocked his view entirely.

"Well?" Seifer's word was harsh.

"Well what?"

"Can you get it open?"

Hayner pushed at it with his hands, then pulled, then tried his elbows, finally his head (which left him with a dull, pounding pain radiating from a line on his parietal bone). The bitterness was that he could feel it start to give, and that he could feel his arms would not be enough to push it through. The four weak screws keeping the vent cover on must have rusted from being outside so long.

"Shit," he observed.

"…is 'shit' Hayner-speak for 'No, Seifer, I cannot seem to open the vent cover, because despite having been subjected to every kind of physical strain that you have been subjected to for the last _five years_, and eating vegetables so fucking healthy we literally harvested them from the ground, I still have _tiny weak little girl arms_'?"

"God, you know what? Fuck you."

"Yeah, good luck with that, seeing as how we're totally stuck unless you can get that thing open."

_Pang_. It was like a pebble dropped through a tube in his heart. It rattled around the cavity and ruptured vital things. He hadn't thought of that. The vent was too narrow. They couldn't inch backwards; it wasn't tall enough. They were stuck. Foreverevereverever, here. Even if they could move backwards, they couldn't do turns backwards. Even if they could do turns backwards, they'd put the cover of the vent back over in that room. They would die in the vents. Legitimately die, as mummified corpses, because nothing lived here. Cold and frozen with their eyes wide open.

"Oh God," he choked.

"Hayner?"

"Oh God. Oh God, oh God, oh God, oh God."

He thought about it, both of them dying. Maybe Hayner's hands would still be extended, still trying to open the vent. And the next kids to try and escape through the vents ran into their frozen, dead bodies, and they too died, stuck. It would build up, years and years of frightened children trying to escape, blocked by the corpses of those before them, until finally someone would pull the cover off that vent and see a pair of stiff feet sticking out, and realize that years and years ago at the front of that frightened line of children were the first.

_Fwip, fwip, fwip, pang_. Different parts of his chest were tied together with string. The strings were tightened. It was like a corset around his heart.

"Oh my God, Seifer – " he squeaked, too far gone to care about his tone.

"Hey! Hey. Calm down, okay? Hayner. Calm down. We can figure this out."

He felt like he was going to start crying. Figure it out! It was easy to figure out. Hayner was just too fucking weak to let them escape. Too fucking weak to do something that would've been easy as shit for Seifer. It was his fault for going first.

Rationalizing anything had become second nature to him. Not, not rationalizing – maybe high school would have given him a better word for it. But making things seem okay. Settling. It will be okay like this. I don't mind it like this; it doesn't have to get better for me to be satisfied. I do not mind that all of the buildings are turning into dirt. It will be enough, if I die here.

He couldn't make this better, he could not be satisfied with dying in a tube, he could not it-will-all-be-okay this situation. Which was ultimately why he couldn't breathe.

"Come on, now. Come on." A solid, warm weight on the back of his thigh. He wondered if it was Seifer's head or Seifer's hand but focused on it anyways. "Don't go batshit on me, slacker. I need you right now."

Hayner gasped and let the collapsed tube in his heart re-inflate, breathing out long and low through his nose. "Alright."

"You good?"

With pursed lips, he was quiet until Seifer spoke again.

"There's got to be a way out. I don't have that crushed hope feeling yet." Nervous laughter.

"I could – try turning around in the vent. I'm pretty sure that if I could just push with my feet…"

"Yeah – yeah, and I could push you from behind, too. You're almost there just with hands, right? A little more force oughtta do it."

Wondering how, exactly, he was supposed to turn around in this situation only bred more crushing of the tube in his chest. He abandoned the notion and thought about the best way to do this. On top, he had maybe three or four inches of space above his head at most. If he scrunched up on one side of the vent, he might eight or nine inches on the side, absolute maximum. Yeah. Yeah, he could work with that, if he didn't panic.

"Okay," he said, mostly for himself. He sucked in his stomach, though he couldn't imagine that would help at all, and pressed his back to the ice that was the side of the vent. His shoulder touched the ceiling, pushed it up just that tiny amount. But if it could bend, if this metal could bend, that would only…help.

"Try going one leg at a time," Seifer advised. Hayner got his first glimpse of the blond for the first time in forever, his hat pulled down over his ears and his hair tickling his eyes. He looked in worse sorts than Hayner felt, which was saying something.

"Yeah."

Bring up the top leg first, scrunched up with the tootightboot pressed against the opposite wall. The building groaned like it could feel its two blond kidney stones pressing against its innards. His leg pushed on the wall. The wall pushed on his leg. He felt like it was going to explode, like his knee would crack and his shins would fall off, so he inched that foot forward and again forward until now the stretching crack feeling settled on his thigh. It was awful. He kept going.

_Thunk_, finally, when that leg made it to the other side. One down, one to go. This one was, naturally, a little more awkward – being underneath, and all, and what with the other leg straight and bent towards his nose in the way – but he inched it forwards, too, and felt that same pain.

It was funny, though. That pain reassured him that he was doing it right.

And then he wasn't. His leg stopped moving. Right leg was on the other side, stretched up and out of the way, back to the side of the vent, and his left leg squished between his body and the other side and – and – it wouldn't - !

Hurt, too.

"Oh God, fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck –"

"Hayner!" Setting his wide eyes on Seifer's face again. This face he knew. Okay. "What is it?"

"Stuck," he heaved.

"…a-" the long, windy noise of exhalation out of his nose. Seifer reached forward with his hand, balancing on his other arm.

Dammit. Dammit, dammit, _dammit_!

It wasn't _fair_!

He had this one thing to do, this one thing Seifer was barred from doing, and he couldn't. And he managed, somehow, to make Seifer help him every step of the way.

He didn't. want. to.

With a heave, Seifer shoved Hayner's foot away from the wall and helped him to unfold and lie on his belly. Their noses touched, when they did this, and Hayner gave himself a moment to just feel alright about it. To think that Seifer had a perfect space right between his eyebrows, with no ugly pores or anything.

"Here we go, Hay," he smirked, and Hayner pinched his lips together.

He pressed his feet and his tootightboots against the vent, felt the metal just give in the middle. And, like tripping awake in his sleep, his kick was sudden and fierce. _BANG!_ He scared himself, because it sounded almost like a gunshot. He felt the push back against his feet but could not see if the cover had fallen off fully. His shins rattled and his skull buzzed.

"Fuck! Seifer, I can't tell, did that work?"

"Damn, lamer. That's two today. First that shit with the key and now this."

"What? Did it work?"

Seifer smirked. "You're fucking ridiculous." For the life of him Hayner couldn't reply – what did you say to that? Honestly. What the hell did you say to that? He didn't mean it as an insult, but he probably hadn't meant it as a compliment.

"Did it work?"

"Yeah. I'll push you backwards, you just try not to fall on your ass this time. This can't be more than a few feet off the ground." It was with this little warning that Hayner began to slide backwards, until his feet popped out (damp, and cold air on your ankles _never felt this good before_), then knees, his ass grazing the top of the shaft so he could swing his lower half down. And down and down, until tootightboots touched dirt, and the rest of his body slid out to fit straight onto his hips. He felt like a folding chair, unfolded.

"Comin' out head first!"

Hayner laughed and helped him down.

* * *

It was fast, the escape. The sun had stretched to early afternoon, and no later; shadows minded themselves and kept close to their origins.

The building was old. All of the buildings were old. Cracks creeped up their sides like branching trees. Lichen crawled across their damp bricks.

"So, what now?" Hayner said to the open air, Seifer running his tongue along the inside of his cheek, arms folded, leaning against the wall. He looked dubiously at the vent cover, hanging by one screw and screeching with rust.

"What 'what now'? We're out."

"Yeah. So what do we do now?"

"What we usually do." Seifer spit into the grass to his left, smacking his lips and unfolding one arm to scratch at his forehead. "Why? You have some grand revenge scheme? Get real, slacker."

Hayner yawned (felt the crack and the brief deafness of an imaginary balloon expanding in his mouth), stuck his hands in his pockets. "I don't – Jesus, come on. You can't expect to stay here and just have everything be fine, do you? We're scapegoats for something. So we're obviously easier to catch than whoever actually killed the – the, uh – " Was it still a person, that broken down?

"Man?" Smirk.

"_Yes_, okay. (Asshole.) My point being they'll just come catch us again if we stay here! And it's not like we've got anything to stay for."

They could…probably make it. If they stayed, they could avoid Marluxia and his men. They could, right? Nobody knew their names. Just a couple of guys with ratty clothing. One of them was blond and one of them had a hat. That couldn't track someone down. It couldn't.

But they'd…been there so long. Never moving. Living in the same four square miles for five years but never sleeping in the same place twice. Never moving and surrounded always by brick and steel and brick.

God, he was so _scared_ all the time, scared of everything, scared of dying tomorrow or living the day after, scared of Seifer hating him and of hating Seifer, scared of never leaving this place, ever, and scared scared _so scared so terribly horribly knee-shakingly head-tinglingly stomach-crunchingly frightened out of his mind_ of leaving. What if it was even worse out there?

What if it was even better and they didn't want him?

"Yeah, but…what would we leave for?"

"I just – "

"Where would we go? How would we get there? Where would we sleep while we went there? What would we eat? How would we know when to stop? You gotta think these things through, Hay."

"Why?"

Seifer blinked and stepped forward a little, thought better of it and stopped moving. "What?"

"Why think it through? We never did before. You telling me you knew how to get out the minute we got locked into that room? Or that we never got up in the morning not knowing where we'd go back down? We'll survive…we'll survive."

And Seifer, he didn't say a thing.

"It's what we do. So let's just – do it somewhere else."

His only person looked the way Hayner felt. He'd sucked his stomach in a little bit, hunched over the cavity with hands in his pockets, the smallness of his once-oversized shirt now not even coming past his belly button.

* * *

"And lonely as it is that  
loneliness  
Will be more lonely ere it  
will be less -  
A blanker whiteness of  
benighted snow  
With no expression, nothing to  
express.

They cannot scare me with  
their empty spaces  
Between stars – on stars  
where no human race is.  
I have it in me so much  
nearer home  
To scare myself with my own  
desert places."  
- **Robert Frost**

* * *

A few minutes' debate brought them to the same conclusion. The train tracks were a stupid way to walk; they led to fuck all, probably a train station or something. And what good was a train station with no trains? It was probably built where it was for the view. Views were nice but they didn't feed you.

The river, they decided. Seifer Almasy and Hayner Conway were going to follow along the river, though it had witnessed the murder of the man in that body, and flowed like thick molasses until at least a mile outside the city (they had never been any further).

They walked alongside the black sludge as if it was the most normal thing in the world, and Hayner harbored secret dreams that in twenty minutes they would come around one of these twisty curves and run right into a rural fishing village. A kindly couple would take them in and they would fish together for a while, and bathe with soap. They would come away from it smelling like shampoo and having eaten macaroni and cheese. They would take hot showers and afterwards curl up under blankets with really bad action novels – the kinds with names like _Alex the Teenage Spy_ – and let the freshly acquired heat resonating in their bones get trapped inside the blanket like a warmth cocoon. They would sleep for nine hours every single day.

His feet were sore and he was pretty sure the skin of a burst blister was rubbing against the shoe and the raw skin of his heel. His head felt swelled up like a balloon and one of his ears was clogged. The muscles in his arms shook, still, from the effort it had taken to crawl through the vents; he had to pee really badly.

But he kept walking. Seifer was walking, and he could walk just as long as Seifer. Right above his butt his spine was starting to ache, like he'd sat funny for too long.

It was loud in a forest. They weren't anything like he'd thought. Wind didn't rustle leaves gently. It was like maracas filled with sand, they were so loud.

He had, after a few minutes of the walking, fallen into a sort of beatless rhythm with his own mind. Each footfall was a syllable and his tootightboots sunk just a little into the mud by the river bank. Every once in a while they passed by a real big log or a funny mushroom or a rock in the path (and his eyes stayed on the ground, the whole time on the ground tracing everything and looking for the stable places and numb to the colors and the things). His gaze was drawn to these – he wanted to roll the log over and look for salamanders or frogs or anything, really – but Seifer didn't stop to roll over logs.

Standing still and walking at the same time. His legs moved on automatic, his arms halfway extended for balance. It was hard to think when so many parts of your body were sore; Hayner couldn't tell if this was a good thing. Seifer had said something about this a year in.

_"The way I see it – see, you never really find these totally poor dying people in Africa complaining about the purpose of their lives or some shit. They just want to survive. So if we're always so concerned with – with surviving, if we're always hoping the cuts on our legs don't slow us down or whatever. If we're hungry and won't last another day without food, you kinda just stop caring about anything else. Like, think about it. You remember in fourth grade or whatever when everyone really started wanting to fit in and shit? And popularity is some big thing. But now it's like, it's like, fuck that. Who the fuck cares about whether anyone likes you? Who the fuck cares about anything if you're gonna die? It's perspective, chickenshit. God. Oh my god. I sound like such a fucker. Punch me in the face if I ever sound like that again."_

Hayner couldn't think of anything to say. What did you say to that? He'd never put any thought into it at the time. All he could think was to agree with Seifer. But Seifer had said that thing at the end, and Hayner just didn't know what to say, so he hadn't said anything at all. That sort of thing had happened a lot. Hayner didn't know what to say to Seifer and eventually Seifer stopped saying things.

What helped, when you were distracted by your own pain, was to distract yourself with the other things too. Hayner lived outside of his head. It was so dark inside. He filled his eyes up with the way the sun hovered interminably at a forty-five degree angle to the ground and searched it out between the leaves of the trees.

After a good while walking – he paid attention, really well, and the shadows of branches got longer on the ground so it had been hours or something, right? – he began to think of ways to stop. Excuses that he had not already used. The worst part about going to a relative's house when you were ten years old was waiting for the meals, because they liked to eat at about seven in the morning, then no lunch until two o'clock, and dinner happened just about whenever with no regard for the size and consistency of a little boy's stomach. This was the same thing in that way: avoiding a problem without looking like a lazy pig.

They'd already gone to the bathroom once.

_Alright. So I ask him if we can go bathe in the river. Winter's never been all that cold, at least, it doesn't snow, so the water can't be that freezing. Yeah. I'll ask him._

Seifer swung everything when he walked (and Hayner, who walked behind him, noticed this all the time). His arms, his legs, his shoulders, his hips. But his spine was straight and his head held high.

_I'll ask him on the count of ten._

_I'll ask on the count of thirty._

When he got to twenty-three, Hayner asked, "Seifer? It's getting pretty late. I say we wash some crap off in the river and call it a night."

Seifer slid the hat off his head and wrung it between his hands, glancing at the river. It ran smooth and deep. "Sleep where?"

"Here. On the grass, or whatever." Adding 'or whatever' was good because it made it seem like you didn't care what was going on.

* * *

They undressed quietly and quickly, with no shyness to deter them. Hayner wiggled out of his pants, cast them on top of a rock, and waited for Seifer to finish. The banks here were steep, and there was no carefully acclimating yourself to the coldness of the river – you just had to jump and hope for the best. He stilled himself and breathed.

Bootless feet felt better than anything had for a long time. It was one dream that could come true, on a separate and lower run from soap and hot showers and instant noodles. Dreaming of letting your feet expand from their cages. Ah, god, grass on blistered toes damp from freezing rains, his outside world of detailed sated for once.

"Are you waiting for something or what?"

"No. No, just thinking." He stretched his toes out against the soil to expose their insides. Breezes from the water, god.

"About _what_? You were the one who wanted to go swimming." Seifer stretched his neck to either side harshly, raising his arms above his head and grabbing one hand with the other. A long, thin rash traced his spine with red blotched, but Hayner said nothing because nothing could be done about it. These things, more often than not, went away.

"Whatever," Hayner snorted, and as soon as he saw Seifer take a step towards the river jumped in himself – first. The water stung at the blister on his feet. God. Seifer leapt in a second later, swam forward and underneath. Hayner's foot brushed against the hair of his head. He reeled back, rose up to gasp for breath and pushed the hair away from his face. The water, though, it flowed past his body and caught on his back like and underwater sailed. It pushed him forward some tiny bit until Seifer popped up in front of him.

"Not as cold as I thought," he confessed. "It _is _still January, right?"

"Think so. I mean, I'm just going by what that kid said. Remember him?"

"It was this _morning_, so _yeah_," Hayner's insides recoiled at the tone of his voice. "Of course I do. He said it was New Year's a while back, which makes sense 'cause those fucking Christmas songs were playing the day we were – "

"Yeah." Hayner didn't want to hear the rest of the sentence. He knew what Seifer was going to say and it didn't need to be said. "It feels warm for January."

"Feel warm for February, too." Laughing, Seifer dove back under the surface of the black river water.

"It's slower the further away we get," Hayner said to himself, and dunked under. He missed entirely the open mouth and wrinkled nose on Seifer's face, missed the mouthing of "the fuck is with you today?" He was too busy floating underwater, where bubbles caught under his hair tickled their way to the surface (it was fingers running from the base of his skull to the top of his forehead, but smaller and safer and not human thankgod).

Could you open your eyes under water? His dad had never told him about that. He'd said "opening your eyes underwater in the pool will make them red" but nothing else, nothing about ponds or lakes or rivers. Would those turn your eyes red? Would they poison you?

When Hayner opened his eyes he saw bubbles again, so he shut them right away and clamped two fingers over his nose. When he tried again the world was brown and fuzzy and tiny white things floated in front of him, and when he looked down it was far down. So, so far down, twice his height at the very least. He'd had dreams like this. They weren't underwater. They were flying, and he didn't have to pinch his nose shut to see. But the idea was just the same, regardless. Rocks, dark with long brown strings of algae undulating lazily. Any place bare was covered with sand and dotted with dark green plants like stretched blades of grass. Mostly it was these, the wavy dark green things which made the bottom look like it was made of a thousand tiny fish all moving in unison. There were real fish, not dark green, not long and surging with the water but silver like darts, banded together by tens or twenties which swelled when they had nowhere to go and arranged themselves into an arrow when the river threatened to wash them away.

He floated above Atlantis, brown and green and drab and maybe not the most beautiful thing he'd seen in eleven years but certainly exciting in possibility.

The little kid in him wanted to snatch at the silver fish and hold them in his hands so that he could see their opalescent eyes and count every tiny scale. A thing that lived underwater seemed so fragile.

Beneath him on the floor of the river, the kelp swerved and twitched violently in front of his eyes, and the twitching and swerving moved through and out until the edge of a broad lunar tail was exposed. With a powerful beat of that tail it disappeared again and stopped moving, the kelp settling around it.

Unsettling.

Hayner stuck his head above the water again with a gasp, his lungs inflating like paper bags, and was not alone anymore. Seifer was maybe than ten feet away. His hair was slicked back with wet, and he was watching Hayner with no small curiosity.

"See anything down there?" he asked.

"You didn't look?" It was rare for Seifer to honestly ask Hayner's opinion about something. He'd probably seen something and wanted to know if Hayner had seen it. Ass.

"Nah," came the reply. "I was trying to wash all this shit off my arm. I think I got some dust or something from the vent on it. Isn't that weird? You never see dust outside. I mean, in the air you do, but it never lands on anything. Not even in caves. I guess the wind keeps it from staying."

"Maybe."

"Yeah."

"…there are some fish."

"How big?"

"Most of them were maybe the size of your hand. They were about that long. Skinnier, though." His arms and legs made circles in the water while he paddled to stay still.

Seifer wrinkled his nose and looked down at the water right underneath his chin. From above it was black, just black. "That's not very big," he said like it was Hayner's fault the fish were so small. "Should we bother to try and catch any?"

Hesitating a little on part of the tiny twisting in his stomach and the ringing in his left ear where the water had not quite drained, Hayner added, "I think I saw a bigger one down there. It wasn't the same kind. I just saw the tail but it was – I mean it was really big. I think it was like an eel or something and the tail was this thick." He held up his thumb and forefinger four inches apart.

Eyebrows raised and mouth smiling, "Why didn't you say that in the first place? Aw, that'd be awesome. Okay. Where was it?"

"Under the plants. I dunno if we'll be able to find it again. As soon as it stopped moving in the grass I couldn't see where it was."

"We could drop a heavy rock and scare it out. If you do that I could try to chase it into a corner."

He folded his arms across his bare belly, then unfolded them because he couldn't do that and stay floating – he was a little hungry, sure, but definitely not something he couldn't handle. And they'd already done so much today, why bother? The fish lived here. It would be here tomorrow. Would Seifer understand?

No.

Better safe than sorry, anyways.

People are like that.

"It's getting really dark," he said, pointing to the sky. "I don't think it'd be a good idea, especially since it's probably a pretty big fish. It might be dangerous if we can't see it at all. If – I mean, I guess." He left it open for correction. For 'it's just barely getting dark, you wuss' and 'let's do it before midnight, then. Honestly, lamer.'

"Fine." His voice was clipped, but Seifer pushed past Hayner over to the edge of the river. Hayner followed suit, reluctant to leave the weightless place and reluctant to regain the pulling burden of his lower body.

(Had he ever actually learned to swim? Had he not forgotten in the eleven years since? How had he known? Why hadn't he drowned? _Why hadn't he drowned?_)

His clean pink feet touched soil and got dirty again; so did his hands and his thighs and his knees. Clean was a temporary thing.

"Here, get your clothes," Seifer ordered, and threw Hayner's pants at his head. "We should clean them up if we're going to stop here for the night."

Hayner grabbed his shirt off the ground and walked back over to the river, but did nothing until Seifer came up behind him with his own clothing in tow. He didn't know what he was supposed to do, exactly.

Silent, Seifer kneeled in nothing but his skin and the grime the river couldn't wash off, and dunked his coat. The white fabric drifted listlessly beyond his hands and the dark stains of water spread to the whole thing. He started to scrub it against itself, vigorous, twitching the fine tendons in his wrists. Hayner did the same with his camo pants, getting at the areas with the grease stains or the blood. The spots didn't go away, but the crustiness did. He sat his bare ass down on the ground and dangled his legs in the water, using the wet shirt like a towel to clean off his calves and feet before washing it out again.

When they were finished, they put their clothes on the grass and spread them out to dry, and lay down to dry themselves off.

It was much more than quiet. Things made noises, tiptoed across stones, splashed, croaked, whispered with insect wings. Hayner felt like he didn't belong here, and rolled his head to the side to look at Seifer.

If he wasn't talking, Seifer was beautiful. He was masculine, sure. But beautiful. His ribs were carved solidly in his chest, like hills and valleys on his sides. A line down the middle of his stomach was proof of his physical strain, the same for the bumps of his arms and the line of his thick neck. Hayner was afraid to let his eyes go any lower.

"It's freezing," Seifer said. Having a voice come from this perfectly still body with eyes closed was unnerving.

"It's not that bad."

"It is too. Don't be an asshole. It always feels colder once you get out of the water." Hayner didn't say anything. He could think of nothing to say. "I can't go to sleep, because I'm too cold," Seifer said. "But I can't put on the clothing, either, because it's wet and that'll make me colder."

"So don't sleep."

"What am I supposed to do? Stare at the sky for three hours?"

Hayner shivered and sat up. He stared at the sky. Were there always so many stars? That couldn't be right. There were supposed to be maybe a hundred or so. There were too many.

He looked back down, because the black outlines of the trees were scaring him. He put his forehead against his knees.

There was a snort a foot and a half away, and Seifer sat up, frowning. "Hey," he said softly. "You draw on my back if I draw on yours?"

There again, the little twist in his belly. "Sure. You first. Turn around."

His knees folded in, Seifer turned his back to Hayner and held still, his muscles tensed. Hayner thought for a second, then put the tip of his forefinger to Seifer's skin and began to draw.

"There. What was that?" Seifer shivered under his finger. The warmth was probably weird, since he was so cold.

"Did you draw a smiley face on my back? Lame."

"Tch. You liked it." He regretted the confidence in his words.

"Whatever. Keep going, it feels nice." Hayner did, dragging his finger across the skin, damp and tanned and cold, unsure about even this much contact. They did this sometimes, just because. It was an unspoken agreement. Sometimes they needed to, so they just did and the end of the day when they couldn't sleep. Like a brief interlude of friendship. "No homo," as Seifer insisted just once.

Snort. "Chickenwuss, did you seriously just write 'you suck' on my back?"

"Yeah." With a smirk, Hayner gave up on symbols or words. He went to patterns, tracing swirls or straight lines or the bumps of Seifer's spine, because the point was it felt really nice. All the while the shivering, because, Hayner suspected, Seifer was ticklish and they usually did this with clothes on.

They switched after a while. Hayner didn't shiver. Maybe he wasn't cold enough. Maybe he wasn't ticklish. He wouldn't know. But god did it feel wonderful. Just one finger on his back. He could go on with just that, as long as he had something, some sign they didn't hate each other.

It would have been enough. To die like that, with Seifer drawing letters on his back. It would have been enough.

* * *

A/N: No DiZ and the crawlspace jokes. I'm begging you guys. 3:

And I know kelp doesn't grow in fresh water. And that it isn't a plant. Like I actually really actually know.


	4. Hiding Our Flaws

A/N: SO HEY GUYS. TWILIGHT. IT IS A BOOK SERIES AND A MOVE FRANCHISE. CAN WE MOVE ON AS A CULTURE PLEASE?

I have a list of things I want to stop getting stuck in my head. 1) Every Lady Gaga song ever, since she terrifies me; 2) Batman; 3) Cloud Smiles; and most importantly, our new edition, the part of One-Winged Angel where the chorus goes "SEPH-I-ROTH!" (dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-DUN-DUN-DUN-DUN) "SEPH-I-ROTH!"

I mean, it's not really a good thing to be humming to yourself in public, yeah?

"Hey, what's up?"

"SEPH-I-ROTH oh sorry what I didn't hear you."

* * *

**Chapter Three: Hiding Our Flaws**

* * *

I have no faith in human perfectability. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active - not more happy - nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.  
- **Edgar Allen Poe**

**

* * *

**

He woke up three forevers later (really woke up, not the groggy rolling over because Seifer's hand was dangerously close to touching your belly waking up), and had another weird sleepover moment. The ones where he'd open his eyes after a sleepover and forget he wasn't at his house.

Nature was really…wiggly. The grass was wiggly. Trees were wiggly. Clouds were wiggly. He was wiggly, too.

Hayner Conway really, really wanted to go climb a tree.

He felt weird and naked and lumpy, like his body was shaped by the clothes he wore and not vice versa, so not wearing them made him revert to a formless fleshy mass. _Ew._

"Seifer," he hissed. "Seifer! Are you awake?" All he had was a decent view of the guy's back, wide and slightly tanned. There weren't any scars or anything on it. But when he lay on his side like that you could see his ribs. Hayner wanted to run a stick across them to see if they made a clanking noise like with fences.

"Kinda." The reply came so late it was almost a shock.

"Oh. Sorry." And then again, a few seconds later, "Sorry."

"Hey, you know what's weird?"

"What?"

"You remember how Saturday morning cartoons always made high school look so awesome?" He hadn't turned around or anything. Seifer was just talking with his back to Hayner's face.

"...yeah."

"I dunno. You feel like you missed out on something?"

Hayner thought about saying something like 'Can't miss what you never had' but he knew that wasn't really relevant. "No," he lied. "Never really occurred to me. Why?"

"Just thinking. Jesus." Seifer rolled over onto his belly to pull on his pants, and Hayner idly did the same so that rustling cloth and zippers were the only thing to punctuate the silence.

"So – so where now?" Hayner asked, reasoning with himself that asking Seifer something unsarcastic was about as good as rolling over with his paws in the air with them.

"I just thought we'd keep walking along the river until we get to the ocean."

"Then what?"

"_I _don't know. Why don't _you_ think of something for once?" he spit, standing up and pulling his vest tight around his shoulders.

It went on like this.

* * *

The day he remembered best so far started off pretty normal, and ended pretty normal too, except for the middle went funny. They woke up and washed their faces and their mouths, and tried and failed to catch a big fish in the river, and looked at anything but each other's eyes. They settled for raw fern leaves, which were bitter and stuck in your teeth, and Hayner took a chance at chewing on some bark he remembered being kind of sweet. It was sweet this time, too.

And then they were just walking along with the current, Seifer in front with his hands in his pockets and Hayner sort of wandering a ways behind him. He'd stop to look at funny plants growing by trees or something that looked like a snake or a lizard but turned out to be a stick when he got close, then realize he'd fallen behind and jog to catch up.

All of a sudden a funny pressure in throat, like he'd swallowed an acorn, and no matter how much he swallowed he couldn't get rid of it. And a churning in his stomach, like somebody was mixing it with a spoon, and the pressure built and built and pushed on his ears and he felt absolutely awful. He felt like he'd been reading in a car. He stumbled to the river and fell to his hands and knees, dry heaving once or twice before puking up his breakfast. It was sort of pitiful to watch nothing but slimy, chewed up ferns some out of your mouth, stewing in watery stomach acid and nothing else. He breathed in and out for a second, then puked up more water, leaving a sour and foul taste in his mouth. He may as well have sucked on a brown, rotting crabapple. Hayner grimaced and wiped his hand over his mouth, and cleaned it on the grass. He watched his watery puke sink and wash away in the river, and watched a couple of thin silvery fish come to the surface and try to eat it before spitting it back out.

God, that _smell_. It was awful. Puke smell.

"_Hayner_!" Seifer's footsteps were soft but intrusive. "Hayner, Jesus shit, are you okay? Hey. Hey." He kneeled in front of him, Hayner still on his hands and knees, and put his hands on either side of Hayner's head. "Whoa. What happened?"

Thumbs stroked gently across his temples. Breathing in through his nose, Hayner tried to forget the taste in his mouth. "I'm fine," he said thickly. He burped. "I'm okay."

"You sure? Do you need to puke again? Did you eat something rotten? Shit, you didn't try a mushroom, did you? We can't risk shit like that."

"I didn't eat anything you didn't see me eating. I'm just – I'm fine." The hands were still on his face, still cradling, Seifer still kneeling.

"You don't just puke randomly. Nobody just does that." Hayner breathed deeply, and shifted to sit on his butt, eyes still half-closed. "This can't become a thing."

"It happened once," came the weak reply. "Calm down."

"Yeah," Seifer said. "Right." He stood up and dusted off his pants, then turned and kept walking.

Hayner scratched at his cheeks and wobbled to his feet.

* * *

The funniest thing happened to your skin when you lived the way Seifer and Hayner did, sick little puppy nomads herding lost memories the way they did. No more watch-shaped tans, white bands with white bulges in the middle, or farmer tans. No more beautiful crisp lines because all of your shirts were the same shape – instead their skin was darkest at the hands and wrists, and faded slowly to white, copper at the forearm, then light brown then pinkish-beige. Their legs were a little stranger; feet were, for the most part, a light golden brown (bake ten years or until done) with slightly lighter bands where straps went in summer – it was easier to make flip-flops than boots – and then that same pattern, dark less dark medium lightdark more light lightest. Some days, when they woke up by the side of the river naked, waiting for their clothes to dry...on the days when the sunlight was mellowed by clouds, Seifer's back looked like a surrealist painting.

It was slow enough out here to notice these things.

God, it was so slow.

It was slow like the river which didn't ever look like it moved but which would take away your shoe if you let it float too long. A giant black snake which swallowed things but gave them back if you only asked.

It went on so long. One day could stretch so far and there were so many days that even ten years in the junkyard city seemed to fade to half of what it was, and twice as long ago.

Hayner had absolutely no clue where they _were_, of course, or if places like this even had names any more, or whatever. Because holy shit, even with someone like Seifer, he was starting to understand people like the native Americans or crazy religious people who were convinced that God watched everything you did or people who believed in ghosts and yetis and shit. Something made it...hard to remember logical stuff when he woke up one morning smelling a weird bitter mint smell and something faintly sweet inside of all the green.

Seifer was still sleeping, the bastard; he'd always seemed to adjust to everything better than Hayner had.

Standing, and with an uncomfortable stickiness in his mouth, Hayner looked around and headed out across the forest, determined to go out and back before Seifer woke up.

The trees were different here and it was so slow but they'd never actually settled down so nowhere actually felt like home, they'd never really stopped not ever it was so lonely sometimes, sometimes, sometimes.

Sometimes, he had dreams, and he was scared that Seifer could see them when he woke up in the morning. He was scared Seifer could see him say things in his sleep, even if they weren't about his dreams. He didn't know. Hayner had never watched himself asleep.

So sunny and bright. Forests never passed judgment. They were an ecosystem centered around trees and the things that flocked to them. Here a stack of eerie white flowers, there some ferns, there a bush of fine leaves. He sat down, forgetting why he'd walked over here in the first place, and just appreciated it for a while.

There was something beautiful and mechanical about plants, he thought to himself. If he stared at the moss just so, and at such an angle, he imagined he could see water slowly getting sucked up. Like a really slow paper towel, absorbing the water through capillary action. Tiny and inescapable veins branched off into more and tinier inescapable veins, until the whole plant was waterlogged and sagged down, wet and sated.

He had a song stuck in his head. A mopey piano song from when he still played piano. He remembered it because he remembered what his teacher had said to him: this is a _sad_ song Hayner, don't just do the dynamic markings on the page, you have to _feel_ the sad part. You feel sad sometimes, don't you? Pretend that your dog got run over and you're sitting there going _Why God, why did you take him?_ And play it like that's what you're feeling.

He'd barely understood what she'd meant, really, but at the recital somebody's mom told his dad that his song had made her start to cry. His dad said that was a compliment when Hayner asked. Silly way to compliment a person, though, with crying. Being able to make somebody sad wasn't a compliment.

"What're you doing out here?"

_Shit_. Had Seifer seen him? Gonna make fun of him for communicating with the flowers or whatever? Call him a dirty hippie? Hayner said nothing.

"What, you're giving me the silent treatment? The fuck did I ever do to piss you off anyways?"

"Sorry," Hayner said, ignoring the blond coming to sit next to him.

"Nothin' to apologize for. It's just, Jesus, you're worse than a girl."

The phrase 'How the fuck do you figure that' came to mind, but the signs at the zoo always said Do Not Feed the Bears. Best not to give Seifer any more fodder for the insult cannon. Tick, tock, tick. They always got bad around each other when there was nothing to run away from.

Lying down on the grass, he stared up at the funky stained glass window of the leaves on the sky. They rustled against themselves comfortably and made lacey patterns.

"Where now?" Seifer said abruptly.

"What?"

"The house, or just keep going down the river? I don't care so I'm letting you decide," he waved his hand dismissively in the air, though Hayner had absolutely no idea what he meant.

"Well thanks, master of all. I'm so glad you're trusting me with this decision. Lowly little me is so honored." It was out of his mouth before he thought about it. Haha. Oops? Shit.

Seifer just rolled his eyes and worked on picking apart a tree sapling he'd torn out of the ground. Leaf, by leaf, by leaf. "You're such an annoying fucker." A distinct decrescendo punctuated his sentence, like he lost conviction halfway through but felt the need to keep talking.

Kshrrk. A piece of bark came off the sapling.

He still had nightmares about Marluxia and the green room and the locked up girls, but he couldn't remember them at all. He just remembered being afraid. He remembered being really, really alone, and really afraid.

It was the smile, and the perfect, light brown skin, and the sparkling eyes. It wasn't _fair_. He had been old enough, when people started to run away, to know enough things to keep going. Had an education. He wasn't ten years old and looking forward to the big adventure of middle school.

His nightmares were gonna start having to take shifts because he had too many things to nightmare about: Marluxia, the teenagers with the knives in the streets, the old relief shelters, "By the way, Hayner, your Dad died in the food tent. It was gross; all the other refugees had to clear out."

"What house?" he asked quietly, letting go of the argument in its entirety. One of these days he was going to have to sit down and organize all his shitty thoughts. They popped up in weird places. He should file them.

"There's a house or some shit over there. Probably abandoned. Didn't you see it? I definitely saw a chimney or something."

"I didn't see anything. It's probably just a rock." He bit a sliver of dead skin off his lip. "...we can check it out if you really want."

There was a snort, and Seifer shifted next to him. "It's right _there_, you probably just can't _see_ it from where you're sitting. Come over here and look before you just decide I'm stupid." Oh, _right_. He'd forgotten the cardinal fucking rule. Seifer's _always_ right, just because. What an absolute dick, but whatever.

There was a house there, of course.

Hayner was in a sour mood when they approached it, careless, walking out in the open right up to the front door.

It was huge, unraveling, and beautiful. They hadn't either of them seen a house for an awfully long time, but it wasn't like the thing was a typical house, either. A fading, rusty orange paint peeled off wooden planks; brown shingles came to a sharp point on several parts of the roof. Perhaps it only looked outlandish because it wasn't surrounded by a manicured lawn, no forsythia in sight. The tall sort of weeds that grew on the sides of highways where nobody could be bothered to plant grass dominated, four feet high and rattling with seed pods or slim white flowers. There were all sorts of things on the deck. Buckets, and tools, and a hose coiled to one side. A shovel and a few brooms leaned against the corner next to the screen door. A couple of t shirts draped over the railing.

It was – unsettling. Someone lived there. Who? Would they hurt Hayner, hurt Seifer? But it was so clean and nice – it probably belonged to a woman. It smelled so sweet.

Seifer's white and dark blue were an ugly contrast to the dusty reds. Hayner wanted there to be a plump, gray-headed lady there instead, not quite old enough to be a grandma, but still old enough to know things and give words of advice and who was good for hugging. Or anyone, really, who didn't hate him.

"D'you think a lot of people live here?" Hayner asked, mostly to himself.

"At least two people did." Seifer pointed to a cross in the ground made of a piece of pipe, tightly knotted to a wooden stick. Grass had taken firm hold of the grave in front of it, but the outline was still distinct.

"They can't be bad people," he said. "If they bury their own so nice."

With a scoff, Seifer rocked back on his heels and stared at the door. "Marluxia – " he started.

"Just knock."

He did. There was no answer.

"Well, _somebody_ had to bury that body."

"Maybe they're out."

"Doing what?"

"I dunno. Hunting and gathering. Or farming. Or something."

Pursing his lips, Seifer reached out a hand towards the door, hooking two fingers around the knob. "Then let's loot while the parents are away."

* * *

At least two-thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity: idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religous or political ideas.  
- **Aldous Huxley**

**

* * *

**

_Clink. Clink. Stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp._ It was their own fault, really. It wasn't as if they were being quiet. They clomped around the house like newly adopted puppies. "I found the bathroom! Seifer, I found the bathroom, should I see if the sink still works?"

"Hang on, hang on, I found the kitchen! _Score_! There's – there's food everywhere! There's like a whole rack of stuff!"

"Holy crap, how many people live here? There are four or five shirts in this closet!"

So when Hayner rounded the corner and saw, in the open doorway, a figure leaning over a table, back to the door, his heart stopped. He backed up. A _person_. Shit. Shoulders, and long hair and a lean back, and movement, oh _God_ oh god oh god oh god. What was it doing? Was it coming? It can't have not heard the- she can't have not heard them, not with the noise they were making. She was just – just _waiting_ there. Like a sick joke. Knowing the little boys would come into her trap. _Raid my house? Come in here and take my things? I can wait. I know where you are. I know what you look like, now. I'll grind your bones to make my bread._

_Clink. Clink. Stomp. Stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp._ Oh God.

He closed his eyes and breathed through his nose, because probably it was a towel rack or a hat and a coat or something that wasn't actually a living breathing person and he just couldn't remember what a not-Seifer looked like anyways so that was okay, oh God, but the steps echoed in the corridor and softened on the Persian rug he'd spotted on the floor, this was just like being at a haunted house because it was just a house and not a mansion or anything, so he closed his eyes and breathed through his nose and prayed.

And when the footsteps stopped, he prayed out loud. "Please, please, please please please please please," he whispered.

"Please what?"

He kept his eyes closed. _I can't see you if you can't see me._

"Please," he said again. What was he even asking for?

"It takes courage to ask for help," said a decidedly male voice. "But you really ought to know what to do with that help once it's been offered. Most of us don't have this problem."

Hayner inhaled loudly.

"Interesting." A finger on his chin, but he didn't open his eyes. "People usually disguise fear as arrogance. Not the other way around."

"Hayner! I found weapons! Get down here!"

His opened his eyes.

He was staring at the man's neck, where a long chain disappeared down the front of his shirt, and a small scar was indented above his collar bone. And he raised his stare, already dreading what he'd find, the preemptive contempt in the returning gaze of someone furious and wronged.

What he found was a sharp face with hollow cheeks, proud structure and green eyes. Two swathes of long, dark blond hair fell in front of his ears, and he couldn't have been past forty. And he was smiling. Of all things. Not Marluxia's smile, a venomous thing, but a real one, like he knew something and was waiting for Hayner to realize.

"There, now. I'm not scary," he said. He took a step back, putting his hands on either of Hayner's shoulders, "Now, let me look at you. Call your friend up here too, if you please." After giving him a quick once-over, the man shook his head, his hair swaying with the movement. What was this? He wasn't a rich man, but he sure wasn't gruff. Did he live here alone? "Look at you, look at you. Unacceptable. What are you? Two percent body fat? Honestly. You're barely hovering above the definition of starvation, is what you are."

"I- I'm sorry?" Hayner said. What, was he being assessed for a stew?

"Ha!" he barked. The man shook his head. "Now, just hang on a minute. You'll understand I haven't had visitors in quite a while." He turned around and went back into the room he'd come from, Hayner still frozen in position.

"Hayner? Hey, Chickenwuss. Respond, you asshole." Hayner kept his eyes on the door, on the long hair draped over a clean brown turtleneck, and long fingers gathering together papers covered in narrow handwriting and diagrams. His legs were shaking – with relief or panic, he couldn't tell, but whatever it was was yellow. "Hayner! I'm gonna start thinking you croaked or something!"

Seifer stomped up the stairs, stopping halfway when he saw his partner, and he scowled. "The fuck, man? You're right here. Why aren't you – "

"Just get up here, Seifer. And shut up." He scuffed his boot on the wooden floor.

"Seifer, is it?" The man returned to the room, pursing his lips and nodding satisfactorily. "Good name, solid name."

Seifer stared at him. He didn't talk.

"You are both extraordinarily rude," the blond commented.

"We're in your house, uninvited," he replied. "I don't know how many people would welcome that with a smile and not a knife. I know I wouldn't." That was Seifer for you. Hayner stood there like an idiot and couldn't get a word out, but Seifer just slid in and acted like an action movie hero.

"Yes, well, what's the harm. It's not like you'll kill me," the man said, waving a hand dismissively in the air and walking past them down the stairs. "Come on, then! Get some food in your systems before you both keel over."

Hayner and Seifer exchanged glances just before Seifer went thundering down the stairs after him. "We might kill you." They all three of them rounded a corner, though the boys stopped at the threshold of a room with three glass walls. "We have the means."

There were plants lining shelves upon shelves, each one neatly labeled with a tag. The tall sort, and the weed sort, and dandelions, and – mostly boring, green ones with broad leaves. He must've run out of pots at some point, because the lower levels of plants were all inside old shoes, and buckets, and glass jars and things. They grew just the same.

"You? No." He pulled a lever or something, somewhere, and dirty green water rushed into an empty bucket from a PVC pipe. "No, you wouldn't kill," he continued gently, "Not me, not in this situation, not when it's easier to run away. Not if you haven't killed anyone before."

Hayner leaned against the doorframe. He was exhausted to his bones – hadn't they just woke up? He fought a feeling of relief.

The man turned around the look them both in the face. He had a curious smile, this man. "There's a line, and you wouldn't cross it for something this petty. Once you've killed, you don't get over it. There's a look in your eye – call me sentimental. There's sadness to your face. If you're a proper human being, anyways. Given enough examples, I've learned to recognize it." He could have been giving them a biology lecture for all the passion in his voice.

"Now – Hayner, right? If you'll kindly hold onto this pipe for me – I think the tubing outside is twisted."

_If you're a proper human being, anyways._ Hayner dumbly held onto the PVC pipe, keeping it steady over the bucket. He would ride out this strangeness until he was given a moment of relative piece. Then he'd sort all this out. This stranger, and a house, and the slight shaking in his hand because something was so unnatural about smooth white plastic with digitized numbers stamped on the side.

The man opened a sliding door to the outside, walking in front of the windows and fiddling with was looked like a thick black hose. He gave it a good tug and stared at something on the roof.

Hayner licked his lips and glanced back at Seifer, who leaned against the doorframe with crossed arms and narrowed eyes. "Seifer? What – "

"I vote we stay. He's got food, and he's obviously gone nuts all by himself out here. Did you hear him talk?" His voice took on a bumbling, cartoonish tone. "Dur, you haven't killed before you guys, I can just like _tell_, you know? I'm sure it's fine to let desperate, starving, violent people half my age and with twice my strength into my house and then ask them to do me favors." He snorted and glanced at the guy outside, still straightening out kinks in the hose. "Unbelievable."

"A – aheh. Well, at least he's harmless, though. So – sure. We can just stay for a while. Maybe get information. He seems like he's adjusted pretty well to this place – I mean he's got a system worked out and everything. He might have maps. I'm not really sure where we are and I saw him taking notes." The spill of information came out in blurts, and he tried to fill the building silence.

Hayner promised himself, silently and meaninglessly, that if he could start over with another person the way he'd started with Seifer, he wouldn't let the hatred spin out of control into this paranoia. But it was already too late. Best cut his losses, and soon.

"Yeah, alright," Seifer said. "Sounds reasona- "

The sliding door was opened again, and the man reentered, dusting himself off. And he gave them this _look_. It was absolutely deadly. It did things to the insides of Hayner's stomach. It was over in a flash, a quick glance, but his eyes were carved into his face.

"Sorry about that. I like to use rain water for drinking when I can, since I don't have to boil it first. And you boys could certainly use some tea – clears a sore throat." He dumped the green water out of the bucket and pulled the lever again, filling it up with clear water right from the pipe.

"We don't have – "

"You do." He looked at them again, and if anything it solidified Hayner's fear of the previous one, because now the smile in his eyes was real, and gentle. "I suspect you've been halfway sick for so long you've forgotten what it feels like to be healthy."

Before Seifer could object again, "Just humor an old man. I'll give you your information, and your maps."

And as he walked past them, he stopped to tap Hayner right on the forehead. "Fools rush in where fools have been before," he said.

* * *

You dehumanize a man as much by returning him to nature - by making him one with rocks, vegetation, and animals - as by turning him into a machine. Both the natural and the mechanical are the opposite of that which is uniquely human. Nature is a self-made machine, more perfectly automated than any automated machine. To create something in the image of nature is to create a machine, and it was by learning the inner working of nature that man became a builder of machines.  
- **Eric Hoffer**

* * *

Steam rose in little curly puffs from plastic cups. Hayner held his protectively, marveling at a source of constant heat without the burn of fire. _Water sure does stay warm for a long time..._

"My name, for our purposes, is Vexen," said the man. He fetched a round glass jar from one of the shelves and put it delicately on the kitchen table. "Doctor, professor, mister – they're all applicable, if you feel the need to apply them." Vexen took a plastic spoon and transferred some of whatever brown chunks were in the jar into each of their cups. "That'll take a few minutes to brew. It's sweet birch bark – closest we'll get to sweet, really, at least until the Stevia begins to grow back."

"'For our purposes'?" Hayner asked. It seemed to be a good question, since Vexen chuckled.

"That means, you call me Vexen. I haven't asked for your last names, have I?" He laced his fingers and placed them on the table, crossing his legs. "I've been here for – oh, quite a long time, now. Years. Found the house abandoned, probably in the initial panic. You know, everyone forming refugee camps, starting up their little utopian socialist farms or whatever that was. Shame. Lucky break for me. Yourselves?"

"We – " Hayner started, but was quickly shushed. Seifer pushed a nervous hand through his hair.

"Went to the same school," he finished.

Vexen quirked an eyebrow, smiled, and shook his head. "Indeed," was all he had to say. He seemed to be a very calm person. He didn't fidget, and didn't glance from one boy to the other. Maybe it was just Hayner projecting what he wanted in a grown-up, but he seemed like he knew what he was doing, like he knew what – everyone was going to say – nobody knew things like that. _You're being stupid, Hayner._ Vexen was a person, after all. For all they knew, a pedophile, or a secret minion of Marluxia's.

"Who were – who are you?" Seifer asked, poking at the slowly unfurling strips of bark in his tea. "I mean – what were you a professor of?"

"Oh, whatever I need to be. Anatomy, botany, ecology, biology, oceanography – a bit of geology, if I have to. One picks up on these things from colleagues. I do have my PhD in optics, which is to say, the physics of light (1). Not much call for that nowadays," he chuckled.

"And what happened?" Hayner asked.

"What happened? I don't know, quite," Vexen took a sip from his cup. "The world hit the off button. Or maybe it was restart. I can't tell, not this early in." Early? Eleven years? _Early_? It was half Hayner's life.

"To _you_." Seifer, it seemed, wasn't nearly as good at keeping a neutral tone. He growled, almost. As much as Hayner liked Vexen, Seifer seemed to hate him. He fidgeted when Vexen leveled his gaze on him.

"I adapted, young man. A colleague and I traveled down here and set up shop in the house, worked out a system, got some plans in running order – and he died, so the going is, of course, much slower." There again, that calmness. 'He died' as if it were nothing more than a conversation topic.

Hayner picked up his drink, still watching the steam rise steadily up from by now reddish-brown liquid. He took an exploratory sip, wary of Seifer's eyes on him, and gauged it was cool enough to drink. He took a gulp.

Vexen was right. It was sweet, sort of. It was the sweetest thing Hayner had drunk in a long time. It melted the insides of his throat, and rose up his nostrils, extending warm little tendrils to his brain.

He tried to ignore the way Seifer wouldn't quit staring at him, fidgeting with the hem of his shirt, shooting little glares at Vexen. "It's really good," Hayner said. Warm, and brown, and simple.

"Hot liquid will do that."

"Where do we sleep?" Seifer asked, crossing his arms.

That was Seifer for you. He never bothered with niceties. But the professor didn't even look like he was listening – probably wasn't, loopy old man. He frowned, his eyebrows drawn, staring down into his cup. "Then again," he said quietly, "I suppose the rest of the world couldn't care less. Sit here and make a big deal about poor old us and nothing else is affected. Funny. Funny world."

He glanced up. "On the second floor, the first door on your left is an empty bedroom. Only one left – used to be my aforementioned colleague's. We converted the other into a laboratory, and I'd rather you didn't sleep in my room. Blankets and things are in the attic. Spare clothes, too, should you need them."

* * *

Everything has been said before, but since nobody listens we have to keep going back and beginning again.  
- **Andre Gide**

* * *

There was an actual mattress on a bed frame and everything. It was a large room, as rooms went – enough space for a two-person bed in one corner, a window, a line of wooden shelves and a bookcase. One of the walls was a bit slanted where it met the roof, and the whole thing was faded wooden paneling. Even a light switch. Seifer gave it a flick, but nothing happened.

Hayner sat down on the bed, hunched over, arms on his knees. He stared at the threadbare shag rug under his boots.

First the gas stations upped their prices. Then they shut down, one by one, and with them the trucks which carted goods. Grocery stores had scarce shelves, and then they were empty. People horded food. People realized they could grow their own food, and got together to do it. Lazy people stole food, and farms fell apart. Some left and some stayed and some died. All a part of growing up. Hayner lost everybody, and he saw Seifer lose his everybody, and one night of "Shit, Lamer. I thought it wouldn't happen to us. Not _us_" turned into five years of a silent promise. Five years in a city turned into an accident and imprisonment. Then escape, then forever walking, and now this.

It had to happen some time. They all knew that.

Hayner was just like everybody else. He'd just wanted it to last long enough for him to grow up. _Then_ everything could fall apart. Why did _he_ have to miss out? Why wouldn't _he_ ever go to high school? Everybody else did. Why wouldn't _he _get to go to drunken parties in college? Why wouldn't _he_ get a job? The plan was be a professional Struggle player and have a mansion and like eight puppies. Everybody else got to grow up. Why couldn't he? It wasn't _fair_.

It wasn't – he was just like everybody else. Why did it have to change, right when he was about to get his own chance at the world? It was like it was his turn at kickball and some kid had popped the ball right when he was about to kick.

And now he was here, with a boy who hated him, missing what he'd never had, and trying to scrape out a routine when everything kept _changing_ and he couldn't do a _thing_ about it! Here he was in a stranger's house in a dead man's room, when he wasn't a proper adventurer. Hayner was suited to going to the beach and not doing homework.

It wasn't supposed to happen like this. Not like this.

So, Hayner Conway started to cry. The crying started with a thickness in his throat, replacing the tea-cured soreness, and built and built. His thoughts were tiny monsters chasing the water from behind his eyes with fire pokers. He cried because it wasn't fair, and he hadn't gotten what everyone else had always gotten. He cried because of all the silent promises that had withered with nobody there to break them. His mouth started quivering, and he bit down on his lower lip to choke it back. But it wouldn't go. It went inside of his heart and pushed from there until he was crying for real, sobbing with a sort of dark, dark orange color, almost black but not. The tore out of his throat and started to hurt, like a fork was stuck in there. He put his face in his hands carefully and cried and cried until he got a headache throbbing in the front of his skull, and then he cried some more.

As for Seifer, he just stood in the corner quietly, watching Hayner's back shake sporadically. But then, what could he do? They couldn't comfort each other. This moment was too personal. It was too open. Too private.

Seifer left the room, shut the door behind him. He put both of his hands on the railing of the staircase and tried to ignore the building thickness in his throat.

* * *

A/N: (1) SEE WHAT I DID THERE OH MAN I'M SO CLEVER

Don't worry, I'm not under the impression that that last part was oh-so-heartbreaking or something. You just do not understand my literary genius.

Also, meet Vexen. Vexen speaks only in movie trailer quotes. Yeah, he's...a lot cooler in my head.


	5. No One But Ourselves

A/N: Ugh. People. I swear to God, you guys. People. They just, they always _want_ things from you.

On the bright side, it's currently blizzarding! About time, too. And yes. I realize my updates are fucking abysmal. But I figure, this way you can...reread...the other chapters to remember what's happening? Also...I'm a bad person?

...go away.

* * *

**No one saves us but ourselves.**

* * *

It is said that power corrupts, but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power.  
- **David Brin**

* * *

At twenty-one years of age, Marluxia Amaranthe (of two rather loopy parents with unfortunately unique name ideas) had become a graduate student. Though a far cry from those select few in the ecology department who exhibited a remarkable and undying devotion to their profession, he was appreciably determined in everything he did. And what he did, he did efficiently – he could loop as many unsuspecting undergrads as he needed for his dirty work, punching in numbers, grinding up samples for the mass spectrometer, and so on – not to mention the possibly illegal and definitely immoral relationship he had with the head of the science department. He was the sort of ruthless leader rarely seen in fields of science, and it was a wonder he hadn't been drawn to law or politics or medicine.

Marluxia was nothing short of manipulative, and when placed in an environment full of clueless and naive students of science, indifferent and removed from love and betrayal, he thrived like an invasive species.

And when placed in an environment full of angry and clueless people, leaderless and frightened of chaotic anarchy, he thrived even more.

After having built up his reputation thus far, Marluxia found little cause to reinforce it. Threats proved effective more often than not, and he always made sure to surround himself with the few competent people who might prove a threat to _him_. Marluxia was manipulative, and he was a fantastic actor when need be, and he wielded those around him like so many tools.

The escape of two men (two children, really), then, proved absolutely unacceptable. The escape of his right-hand man and would-be lover even less so. With two shows of brutal insubordination so close to each other, Marluxia Amaranthe had little choice but to pursue both parties himself. With Larxene holed up in his study dispensing written orders, few would ever learn of his absence.

* * *

"When anything happens the first thing all of you do is fail to behave like human beings! Stop!"  
- **Fyodor Dostoevsky**, _Crime and Punishment_

* * *

Oh my _god_. What a fucking _baby_. I can't be-_lieve_ you, Hayner. Such a _lamer_. You crybaby.

It was missing and Hayner felt that acutely. Seifer, two feet away, crammed at the other end of the bed, had his back to him. Hadn't said a word all night. The bed was comfortable as hell, being as it had blankets and a couple of pillows and wasn't the grass by a river at the onset of winter, and it seemed like a waste to be lying on it and watching someone else sleep. He wanted to prove to Seifer that he was perfectly fine. But with a life like Hayner's, you learned to live with suspended feelings, and the lack of resolution. No time for – what was it? – closure.

This place was a goddamn farm house. Maybe not literally (and he wouldn't know, never having been to a goddamn farm house), but it could sure as fuck pass as one. The walls were wood, bare and untreated, grey with age. The floors, too, where they didn't hide under unraveling carpets. There weren't any pictures on the walls – there was a map pinned up near the bedside table, yellowed and rough, labeled with thin chicken scratch – but that was all. There was a whole wall of books. They didn't have shelves to sit on and gather dust, but stood tall in neat columns with their spines facing out. Proud in their height and their orderliness, no stack was too tall to keep any books from being accessed, but there was still something – sad, about it.

All these proud books and no shelf to hold them up.

When he was a kid, Hayner lived on a pretty busy street, with cars that growled and sped down the road all night long. He would watch as their headlights illuminated his window, made a square of light that got dragged and stretched over the walls until it disappeared with the sound. It was sort of nice, after a while, if you got used to it. Sort of calming.

And now all he had was the still light and the still books and the still man.

The moonlight was pretty, though. It traced a faint, inoffensive white light over the gold letters on the book spines, and the muscles in Seifer's arms. It made him feel sick and tickled in his stomach.

_I've never hated you. Not once_.

* * *

Perhaps the indoors was a signal for Hayner and Seifer that dawn didn't have to be a wake-up call, because this day also found them asleep for the sunrise.

A knock on the door, brisk and to the point. "Boys? Are you awake?"

He didn't wait for an answer, just poked his head into the room, his long curtain of hair frazzled and his glasses perched on the tip of his nose. "Hello?"

Vexen saw both lumps in the bed, each curled up on opposite ends, buried in the blankets. The right lump shifted and groaned, drew the covers up a little further to block out incoming sunlight. "Oh dear," he quipped. "Seems I forgot what it's like to work with people this young." He tutted, swinging the door open and fiddling with the ties around the curtains to open them some more. "Your poor internal clocks have probably been ravaged beyond belief, last ten years being what they were."

Here Vexen paused, and leveled the lumps with a clean look. "Must've been quite young, I suppose. Ten or so. Blessing in disguise, in some respects, isn't it? You're more prepared than anyone for this new world. No more clinging to the old one. Jump in any time, sir, I know you're awake."

"You can't _possibly _fucking know that," came the muffled response.

"I do now though, don't I?"

Hayner shoved the covers down from in front of his face to glare at the man. With his hair mussed and his cheeks lined with the imprints of the covers, he didn't make the most searing impression.

"You think you're funny, huh."

"Well, I amuse me. Usually I'm the only one that matters." He grinned and took off his glasses, cleaning them with the corner of his disgustingly civilized button-up shirt. "Now, there should be some spare clothing in the attic, and once you've had a bath and changed we'll eat breakfast."

Hayner kept quiet, kept his eyes on this funny old mother hen. The man was talking crazy. You didn't _plan_ what was going to happen in your day; it was out of your control.

Spare clothing? Baths? Breakfast?

Delusional geezer.

He couldn't kill the hope, though, burning bright and yellow, a tiny rock in his gut which spun and spun and spun.

"Come on. Out we go, my good man." Vexen leaned over and grabbed the edge of the cover, shaking it and (perhaps not accidentally) lightly smacking Hayner in the nose with the backlash. "Up up up. The days are getting shorter and I've got hardly any time to get to know you before the sun sets."

"Get to know us?" It was "us," not "me". Always us. Slowly pulling himself upright, Hayner supported himself on his hand and winced as he stretched out a cramp in his leg. The frigid air tickled his skin, cooled his damp sweat, prickled. "Why?" Seifer had to be awake by now, listening intently, making judgments like he did.

"Yes. After all, I'm letting you live with me. I think I deserve to understand the boys under my roof." His smirk did funny things to that little stone hope in Hayner's belly, getting called 'boys' and 'letting you live with me' like they could actually be useful, like they could actually have a reason for staying here. No Rich Men, no scary gang leaders, no – _people_.

Him and Seifer and a crazy old man.

Like a fairytale.

_A delusional child for a delusional geezer_, he thought to himself. _How fitting_.

* * *

Vexen must have had a teenage son or nephew or something, because he sure knew how to get them awake, and how to leave right after that. Hayner nudged Seifer with the base of his palm, over the covers, crouching behind him. "Hey. You're awake, right?"

"_Yeah_." Duh, Hayner.

"What do you think?"

"Told you before, didn't I?" Seifer rolled over onto his back, shirt crooked and clavicles exposed. "He's nuts. We may as well take advantage of it. I mean, hell, it's not like we have anywhere else to go."

Hayner drew his knees up, hands at his ankles, staring at the wall of books. "I guess so. Do you think we'll – " but he wasn't sure what to ask.

"We'll what? Stay? Not forever. We'll probably manage to fuck it up gloriously like always."

Hayner didn't have anything to say to that. He just tightened his arm around his knees and stared harder at the books, at their golden letters flashing in the sunlight.

"Hayner? Y'okay, man? Don't go nuts on me."

"I'm _fine_, Seifer." He shot him a glare and rolled off the other side of the bed, feet hitting the floor with a jarringly crisp _thump_. Seifer was such a fucking pessimist. He went around telling you how wrong you were about everything for having hope, and making fun of you for not being as cynical as he was. Hayner was allowed to have _hope_. 'Just fuck it up gloriously like always' his ass.

What got Hayner about Seifer was how he just couldn't let things be, sometimes. He couldn't sit down and say, "Whelp, here I am." He had to qualify it somehow, and let the world know that he didn't believe this could make him happy either. Any situation needed the Seifer Almasy Stamp of Disapproval before he could acknowledge it.

Without waiting for him to roll out of the bed and make a retort, Hayner pulled on his boots and left the room, taking the time for once to really look at where they were. The second floor of the house, at the end of a hallway which hooked to the side and led to the stairs. Small rugs like stepping stones of comfort dotted the aging wooden floor. Here a Persian rug, red and gold and finery, there a welcome mat or a bath towel coming apart at the seams. The little facsimiles of suburban houses were fascinating to him. There were places where pictures had obviously hung, rectangles of paler wood where dust and dirt hadn't been able to penetrate. Many of these had a rough drawing of a tree or a leaf rubbing pinned up instead, like Vexen had taken down pictures of a family he never knew and tried to compensate for the empty spaces.

But Hayner was seeking the attic, and the chain hanging from the ceiling seemed promising. A yank opened the hatch; another yank on a rope brought down the ladder. Dust, pent up and swirling, rushed out of the hatch in a great exhalation, and Hayner coughed violently when it swallowed his head.

"Gross gross _gross_," he muttered, taking a breath of fresh air and holding it while he scuttled up the ladder.

His house didn't have an attic. The very top floor had walls that tapered a little as the roof slanted inwards, but then it just sort of stopped. So he'd never actually been inside someone's attic before, didn't know what to expect – but if he had expected anything, it would've been like this. Boxes of things, labeled with irrelevance, overflowing. Clearly when the family had started putting things up here there had been a semblance of order, an underlying organization which had deteriorated into throwing things on the floor.

He tromped through the piles of crap, a box of child's toys, some old photographs, outdated books and encyclopedias, three violins lined up in velvet cases. There were some articles of clothing here and there, patchily distributed, but never consistent or in enough quantity to sort through until he got to the very back.

There was a little moth-proof cupboard from which hung jackets and coats, and two whole boxes of men's clothing, haphazardly stuffed in. Hayner went for the coats first, of course. They would last you longest. And they had layers, so once they started to fall apart you could dissect them and turn them into something else.

He knew he was a pretty small guy, relatively speaking, so Hayner went for the smaller end of garments first. A leather trench coat, worn but not beaten, hugged his shoulders and was actually a little loose around the middle. Sleeves reached halfway down his forearms, though. Either Hayner had freakishly long arms or a freakishly skinny torso – and his diet being what it was, it wasn't hard to figure out which. Best to get something that would allow a little room for fattening up. God knew he needed it.

Next he tried on a big woolen coat, whose furring lining dwarfed his face, and next a bomber jacket that reached past his fingertips. He sighed, casting it off into the reject pile, and set his fists on his hips to survey the remaining options. It wouldn't be so bad, getting something that didn't fit quite right – it was standard, really, but still – with this many options, it seemed like there had to be something a little better.

"Start without me, didja?" Seifer must have just popped his head up the ladder; he sounded far enough away.

"Just trying to motivate your lazy ass. You seemed mighty comfortable in that bed." Hayner smirked privately and grabbed a black coat, long and small.

"Did I now?" the familiar clomp of boots that didn't fit quite right.

"Yup. Hogged the covers _all_ night."

"Aw. Was baby cold?" He laughed, and Hayner laughed with him, even if it was a little forced. This coat fit pretty damn well, even if he didn't quite understand the mechanics of it. The ends of each sleeve had two golden buttons which didn't seem to serve any purpose besides decoration, and instead of a hood a constricting woolen neck led into a little black capelet that hung over his shoulders. He tried to lift it up to raise it over his head, but it had a clasp to keep it attached to the back of the coat. Well. It would keep his neck warm, at least.

"Nice," Seifer gestured to the coat and picked up the discarded woolen coat. It fit him perfectly, of course. "Did he say just coats?"

"No. He just said 'spare clothing'. I guess we can take anything."

He hitched the oversized hood over his head and frowned. "Is it supposed to be this big?"

"Probably," Hayner said. "Maybe it's a fashion statement." He took a quick sniff of his own coat. "From the 1940s."

"Whatever. I guess it'll keep the snow out."

"Yeah."

"You look like a supervillain, by the way," Seifer told him, perhaps as retribution for implying he had a fashion sense.

"I do not." The forthcoming self-conscious twirl didn't really help his dignity.

"Do. You've got a cape and when you button that thing all the way up it's like an evil cloak. I bet you just found somebody's Halloween costume." Seifer smirked and clapped him on the back before turning to rifle through the rest of the coats for something that might suit him better.

"Sure, but if I'm a villain, you're Cruella Deville."

"What? No! At least being a generic villain can potentially be _dignified_."

Hayner just laughed and sat down with his new coat to look through the rest of the clothing. "It's probably fine. Besides, if you keep it you can have extra fur from the lining for other things." He pulled out an old button-up shirt.

"I guess." Seifer sat down next to him, knocking the hood back. "Anything good here?"

"Just started looking."

There was an awful lot of clothing there, and most of it just made Hayner kind of sad. Like the little girl dresses, the tight teenage sweaters, hoodies. They found a real old military uniform, and knit cardigans with wooden buttons and holes in the yarn.

When they descended again, each boy with his very own set of sixty year old clothing, Vexen was coming out of the room they'd slept in. He had a thick sheaf of papers under one arm. "I hope you found something suitable?"

Hayner stared at him for a moment, mind whirring, revisiting the role of the unwelcome intruder he was only yesterday. He glanced down at the clothing in his hand. Some cotton shirts, two pairs of pants with the legs rolled up and the belts cinched tight, a wooly scarf and as many moth-eaten socks as he could find. _A filthy thief_, said his mind. _He never said you could have any of this. Filthy thief taking advantage of an old man. _

"We did okay," Seifer spoke for him, unsettlingly polite. "Thanks for letting us get clothing. We appreciate it."

Even Vexen seemed put off by the gentle treatment. "Yes, well," he muttered, looking at them strangely. "It's no skin off my back, either way."

"What's that mean?" Hayner blurted. _Teachers like it when they can teach you things_.

"What does what mean? Skin off my back?"

"Yeah."

Vexen pursed his lips, raised his eyebrows. "It just means it's no inconvenience. Maybe I should have given you books, too," he laughed.

Hayner thought back to those books stacked up in the room, their gold letters shimmering in faded moonlight. Oh, he'd like to sit down and have a good look through those books, to read about a world of problems that weren't his own.

"Dunno about that," said Seifer. "I haven't read anything longer than a billboard for like two years."

"Ah," said Vexen. "No problem, that. No problem at all. You'll have to do a lot of reading regardless."

A moment of tense silence.

"Why?"

"I am – unfortunately – an intellectual." He really did sound truly apologetic. "And you are – equally unfortunately, I suppose – under my employ when you live here. I have a good deal of things with writing on them. They need wrangling."

Do you know, it was the funniest thing how Vexen talked like their staying here was a given. Hayner kept waiting for the ice to crack, and for him to stop and kick them out for being terrible people. But it hadn't happened yet. _Man_ was he a little messed up inside.

"If you two are all set with that, the bathroom's the first door on your right downstairs. If you don't mind, I'd rather not waste energy on more than one hot bath. I assume you two are comfortable with that?"

And why not? They'd seen worse of each other.

* * *

Everybody knows if you are too careful you are so occupied in being careful that you are sure to stumble over something.  
- **Gertrude Stein**

* * *

They didn't talk while the bath filled up with hot water; the revelation of naked bodies was hardly a new thing. Hayner was used to it – Seifer was, for some reason, the only person he saw as a body wearing clothes. He didn't immediately come with them, but he wore them. Everyone else was attached to their clothes, no nakedness underneath. It would have been so speculative compared to what he knew for sure, on Seifer.

Seifer, who slid his pants off and put his hands on his back, stretching and blinking hard. He took a long time taking off his socks. His feet were tender: blisters crouched on his little toes and the bottoms of his heels. Seifer's eyes were the same color blue no matter what he wore, even when it was nothing. They never changed with the weather or the clothing.

Hayner leveled this old body with dull eyes. Bony hands with swelled knuckles, a sunburned back slightly peeling, hips red and chafed from ill-fitting pants, those thin shadow lines that traced from the tops of pelvis down to his penis. He didn't look at Seifer's face, though.

His eyes were always drawn to a twisted knot of scar tissue just beneath his ribcage. Seifer wouldn't tell him where it came from. So all Hayner knew was what he could see of it, though it was now commonplace – he knew it was ugly, and rigid, and that Seifer had no feeling there if you touched it.

When he was little Hayner had read a book about an elf who saved someone from a fire, and got a big burn all down one side of his face. He had a big silver scar there for the rest of his life, but the person he'd saved still loved him, and Hayner now realized that it was stupid allegory about inner beauty. But as a kid all he'd remembered was thinking about that big silver scar. He had thought it would have to be beautiful, like a swathe of metallic paint – or why else call it silver?

He realized, now, that silver could be tarnished and ugly and shine with a malice, and a story nobody wanted to hear.

Hayner sat down on the edge of the tub, yellowing ceramic, and touched his fingertips to the water. _Sss!_ He pulled his hand back up immediately, watching his fingers turn red from the heat. Too hot. Or maybe it had been so long that any heat was too hot. He kept his eyes on the water, on the curling puffs of steam that rose from it, the rushing sound from the waterfall at the front.

Seifer sat down next to him, hunched over, hands dangling between his knees, eyes on his hands.

And then he leaned to the side a little.

He leaned to the side and put his head on Hayner's shoulder.

Damp dirty skin and hot puffy breaths and soft blond hair a buzzing underneath the skin, blood or emotions or both, and all of it made Hayner sick to his stomach with excitement. _Mine._

"We knew, didn't we," said Seifer. He stared at a decorative scallop sitting next to the soap dispenser on the sink. "We knew that this would happen someday."

Hayner knew he wasn't talking about the house. Or Vexen. Or Marluxia or the dead man with his shining bones stained with marrow, or the knife or Zexion or Eyepatch or the key or the death or the partnering up. Something in the weight of his words betrayed it. They were too heavy to deal with anything so insignificant.

"We knew this would come."

For the life of him, what could he say. Excuses and technicalities.

"I'm sorry."

"You were ten."

"I know."

Seifer inhaled slowly, stood up, turned off the faucet with a quick twist, and stepped into the tub. He sank down slowly, carefully, and kept his knees drawn up so that half of the space remained empty. Hayner joined him. They sandwiched their legs so they would have room to stretch, though Hayner suspected they were both unduly careful about getting too close.

The shoulder Seifer had leaned on felt heavier now, and that weight was still there, and this distracted Hayner while his body reddened in the intense heat. It was too warm, of course, almost painfully warm, but this only meant it would take longer to cool down. And it was wonderful anyways. Hayner wondered where the heat came from. Then again, Vexen seemed to be quite resourceful in that area – the plants, the tea, the water, and all those diagrams and books and things – he must have had an invention for everything.

Hayner realized with a start that he was breathing quite hard, the heat or the closeness getting to him, and he scrunched up his toes and tried not to look at Seifer.

He tried not to think about what he'd said.

We knew this would someday happen.

His world's downfall was just like everything else they had done. Much waiting, then the build up, the eager prediction of the climax, the words of glory and philosophy and proof that they would go out in a glorious orgasmic show of colors and explosions, speeding speeding speeding up until they fell over the cliff nobody had been looking for. A small, brown, and unremarkable denouement.

He was glad, in a way. Was that wrong? Was something wrong with him? Now that he thought about it, it was over with, it had happened without anyone spurring it, a natural occurrence. He wondered if they'd waited, even hoped for this to happen. The same way you hoped that a dog you took from a shelter, one you picked out for its dead eyes and hopeless demeanor to give it a home, the same way you hoped to God that dog would die before you had to put him down.

Some days he wanted to curl in on himself and hide under a bush.

"Damn. You know, some days I think about how fucked over we got for all this."

"Huh?" Hayner hadn't even heard what he'd said.

"So apparently, nostalgia is this word for remembering old things better than they actually were. Like you can have nostalgia for your childhood usually, because everything seemed so awesome then, even though when you actually were a kid none of it seemed awesome. It just seems awesome by comparison now when you can't have it. So the way I see it," Seifer grimaced, and grabbed a lumpy yellow bar of soap that Vexen must have made himself. "The way I see it, we got just enough of normal life to get all this awesome nostalgia about it, and then the world fucking ended. So we have all these memories about places and things that don't even exist anymore. But little kids, they don't even remember it, they have nostalgia about _this_ world, so it's okay for them. And grown-ups had already finished with nostalgia shit and were sick of the real world, so when everything got fucked up it wasn't nearly so bad for them."

He dipped the soap in the water and trailed it up over his chest, his arms, his back, leaving little bubbly white streaks all along it. He tossed the bar to Hayner, who did the same, and tried his best to get it all over his hands, too.

"So?" he asked. His voice was quiet, and gentle, and he hadn't meant it to come out that way. Seifer looked at him. Right in the eyes, he looked at him, and he was naked on the other side of the tub but he seemed so far away. "I know that," Hayner said. "What do you want me to do about it?"

That was all.

He was choking, his tongue was swollen, and they didn't speak.

Sometimes, Hayner felt like these huge things happened between them, and he didn't understand them at all. Like Seifer was saying something and Hayner wasn't even listening.

He leaned his head back, slid forward a little, not caring that his calf was brushing against Seifer's ass. Seifer did the same, closing his eyes and leaning back.

"Jesus," he whispered. "Why've we always gotta do this?"

Hayner didn't say anything back.

He wanted to touch Seifer, in that moment. Not the way they always touched – accidentally. They'd had awkward brushes before, plenty of them; touching was not uncommon. But he wanted to touch Seifer on purpose, have Seifer know it and do it back, for them to turn to each other in a crisis instead of being back to back. He wanted to be real partners. Not like this. Not like this, please. He wanted nothing more in that moment than a do-over, if not for the whole world, then for them.

* * *

It is possible to fly without motors, but not without knowledge and skill.  
- **Wilbur Wright**

* * *

He'd been so distracted the whole time, Hayner hadn't even bothered to enjoy the hot bath beyond a few fleeting moments.

"Boys!" Vexen called – curious how infrequently he used their names – and Hayner rushed to put on his new clothing before going to see what the old man wanted. Funny how early forties was old to him.

When they had gathered themselves in front of him, the wise professor lecturing to his class of two uninterested students, Vexen smiled and told them they looked much improved from their haggard appearance yesterday.

"I'd like to show you something," he said. "I'm afraid I haven't got any dark, dramatic secrets to keep from you. Just the opposite. Follow me."

He led them outside, past the cleared grass and the makeshift grave, into the woods in the opposite direction from the river, over a fallen tree and a patch of very muddy ground with a board laid over it, and so on and so forth for twenty silent minutes punctuated by heavy breathing.

They came to a large boulder, eventually (not the first of the journey), where Vexen stopped. He led them around it, made a note of its interesting origins. "Almost always, when you see a big rock or something way out here far away from a quarry, it's because glaciers passed through a few thousand years ago. As they go, glaciers pluck rocks off of the surfaces they scrape, and as the rocks slip down again they eventually get deposited hundreds of miles from where they came."

That wasn't the point. The point was behind the boulder, a clearing with little in the way of grass and much in the way of moss and very small pebbles and a little sunlight. It was absolutely full of shit.

Vexen looked very proud.

Rotting planks of wood, piles of metal, torn cloth and paper, boxes full of toys or plastic bags. There was a great deal of cloth, really – and wood – and the metal – less of the other things.

"Um," said Seifer, which about summed up Hayner's feelings on the matter.

"Ah," Vexen said. "Right. Piles of junk. Not exactly encouraging. Perhaps this will help."

He handed them a sheaf of papers. Yellow, crinkled, ripped along a few edges. Hayner took some of them, let Seifer hold on to the rest, and flipped through them. They didn't make any sense. Oh, he could see what they were, individually: calculations for volume or surface area, some more complicated symbols that he figured he would have learned in middle or high school, little technical drawings or boxes with arrows. Notes on materials, "lift," "drag," "thrust," and so on. It wasn't until he got to the picture that he began to understand.

"It's a boat," he said simply. He flipped to the next page. "A boat with a balloon on it."

It was beautiful, the drawing. Like a Hood blimp, a big football-shaped balloon with tethers and ties and bolts keeping it attached to a tiny wooden hull, every plank lovingly drawn down to the graining of the wood, and several attachments that he supposed were crude flaps for steering. And yet somehow old-fashioned, when flying was a luxury, when there were no planes, like it belonged with a bunch of hot air balloons. It was flight. Modestly romanticized and, Hayner's mind reminded him cruelly, silly and impossible, but still flight. And he understood: Vexen wanted to build a machine.

It made sense. All the little devices around the house, pipes and engines. Hayner supposed it was more out of boredom than necessity.

God but it looked pretty in the drawing. Such sure, dark lines of ink, like Vexen had known just what he meant when he sat down to plan it, and like it had come out just right. It didn't remind him of before the disaster. It would be a creation of its own. A new thing made out of dust and remnants and hope, bright and shiny.

"A dirigible, if we're being technical," Vexen corrected him. "But you're more or less right – I haven't got the means or the wherewithal to make a plane, but lighter-than-air flight isn't beyond me."

"Why?"

"Well, it's much easier to fuel lighter-than-air flight, and while it is much slower, with proper planning and weight distribution – "

"Why do it at all?" Seifer finished Hayner's question for him.

"Ah." Vexen paused, pursed his lips, and began to toy with one of the buttons on his trench coat. "I had thought that was obvious." He stooped to pick up a scrap of cloth which was barely large enough to cover his hand, and he went to sit on the large boulder. He half stood, with his legs on the ground and his backside leaning against the rock, and he frowned at them. "I had hoped – but no, I suppose not."

"Humor me, old man," said Seifer.

"If you were to die," said Vexen, "Right now, if you were to die knowing everything you know and you could begin your life again from birth with all this knowledge – would you change anything?"

There might have been a glance there, from Seifer to an oblivious Hayner, searing and brief. "Yeah. A lot."

"Precisely."

Hayner, who had been flipping through the papers again and hoping he wouldn't be responsible for understanding them, looked up at Vexen. "What's that mean?"

"It means that the slate has been wiped clean but we still have all our memories. If we don't act now – " he gestured to the surrounding junk " – then we'll have another four hundred years of Dark Ages, completely devoid of technological development. The key is to set up avenues of communication. Once we assess our situation, we can start acting."

Seifer inched closer to his partner, and their shoulders brushed, and Hayner felt like throwing up again. "You're serious."

Vexen gave them a funny look again, like he'd explained this about a million times and they still didn't understand. Like he couldn't fathom anyone on Earth not having his hopes and aspirations. That anyone as young as Seifer and Hayner could be so defeated. "Yes," he said. "I am serious. And I can assure you with all the gravitas of a man twice your age – for what it's worth - that I am not the only one in the world who thinks like this. Surely you've encountered organizations, groups attempting to drag themselves out of the primordial ooze?"

Glinting green eyes and too-perfect muscles, smooth lips cracking a cruel grin and that one damning phrase, _"Hn. You'll do."_

"Not in a good way."

He just laughed at that, low and hoarse in a good way, and said, "How about this: I would like to build a boat with wings, purely because I want to fly. Does that satisfy your curiosity?"

"It makes more sense to me," said Hayner.

"Then you'll help me?"

Images tickled his conscious mind, a cheesy movie montage with a triumphant orchestral score. Building something from scratch, knowing just how it worked, how to fix it if something went wrong. A beautiful wooden hull with broad curves and a figurehead at the front, something beautiful and new. Not a mermaid, no, something more fitting than that – a dragon, a winged horse, something. And the balloon would be beautiful in its own way, with lots of patches, heavy with history in someone's baby blanket, a scarf, a sweater, a swathe of cloth patterned in paisley or plaid but all delicious and different and _theirs_. The more he thought about it, the more he wanted it. It was like he'd been offered the chance to build his ultimate fantasy treehouse.

"I'll help," he said, never more sure of anything, and glanced at Seifer. "I'd love to. But I can't speak for him."

Seifer crossed his arms and looked away. "Yeah," he said, "You can."

* * *

That night Hayner had a dream, long and involved, and all he could remember was open-mouthed kissing with one of the girls from Marluxia's green room. She made a noise and he touched her between her legs and he woke up crying. He got as close to Seifer as he could without touching and inhaled his maleness. But he couldn't get back to sleep.

* * *

A/N: What? What. Nobody made you read this. I can have blimps if I want. It's sci-fi. I can do whatever I feel like. It has to be SOMETHING.

YOU KNOW WHAT MAYBE I'M JUST UNDER A LOT OF STRESS OKAY

AT LEAST SAIX ISN'T A _CAT_ THIS TIME

Review please? Or not if you don't feel like it. I dunno. Maybe I'm just been insecure or something.


	6. Chapter 6

A/N: OH- OH DEAR GOD, I'M SORRY. You can flog me if you want. I mean if it will make you feel better. Do you remember me? I'm going to go reply to all of the reviews and everything right now I'm a horrible person I have excuses but they're boring also this chapter is long and boring but I AM GETTING BACK INTO THE SWING OF THINGS, GOODBYE.

WAIT NOT GOODBYE. KEEP MOVING YOUR EYES DOWNWARD AND PROCESSING THE MEANINGS OF THE WORDS. THEN - _THEN _GOODBYE.

* * *

Days passed. Long days, with beginnings and endings. You didn't just fall asleep – you went to _bed_, got into pajamas and under the covers and all that good stuff.

It was funny, though. They went up and down with the sun, and got plenty of rest, even if they shared a bed. But the dark circles under his eyes never went away. Hayner would see them in his reflection in the window, or the crusty bathroom mirror – sunken purple crescents. He slept and he slept, but they wouldn't go away.

He asked Vexen about it. Vexen seemed like the kind of person to know these things.

"Really? How have you been sleeping at night?"

Hayner blinked. "...on my back, mostly."

"Please take me seriously," said Vexen, setting down a glass jar on his dresser. It was full of brown water, with bits of dead plant floating in it; Hayner wondered if it was actually for anything.

"What?"

"How have you been sleeping at night?"

He snorted and sat down on Vexen's workbench, careful not to knock anything over. "Alright, I guess. I wake up in the middle of it sometimes, but I usually just go back to sleep, I guess."

"Usually?"

"We-ell, I have nightmares, but that's normal, isn't it?" There was a quiet, hidden little search in the question. That's normal – right? I'm not the only one who dreams about - .

"Yes. I suppose it is...maybe it's a matter of daily activity." He sighed and glanced out the window, where Seifer was stacking up rocks around the vegetable garden to discourage rabbits. Seifer had taken of his shirt; the muscles under his skin moved like pulsing snakes. "I'm sorry I can't be of more help, Hayner," Vexen said, bringing his attention back to the room, "The human body was never really an interest of mine."

"Uhh. Yeah. It's fine."

His hair shifted in the light when Vexen leaned forward a little and put his hands on his knees. Hayner felt funny, being the butt of all that concentration.

Sometimes, Vexen would go very quiet. If Hayner had to come and find him for whatever reason, he'd first check the office, then the kitchen, then look around outside for a while. Sometimes he found Vexen sitting in front of a window, holding a plastic cup full of hot, tasteless tea in both hands, staring out at the world. He wondered what Vexen thought about. Maybe his life, beforehand – Hayner wondered if he'd been married, or lonely, or alone but happy. Maybe Vexen thought about the big flying boat.

It made Hayner uneasy to see this stranger in such private moments, so usually he'd sneak back out and go bother Seifer for something to do.

"Hayner?" Vexen narrowed his eyes. "Is everything all right?"

"Yup. Fine. I just said so."

"Have you and Seifer been getting along?"

"As...much as usual, I guess."

Vexen nodded. "That doesn't mean much." Then, "Which is a real shame. The way you two are with each other – I can't help but wonder."

"Wonder what?" Bristling, Hayner felt himself go on edge, just a little. Careful, careful. Seifer had enough caution in his boots to make a general wary of his footsteps, and Hayner envied him that. Walking down a hallway like he still had something precious to lose.

"...hm. Never mind. It's...not my place."

The word 'codependent' hung in the air, strung out on an invisible line between their heads. Vexen wouldn't be the first grown up to come to that conclusion, either. Hayner had to fight the reflex of "I'm sorry," but he did it; Seifer had seen him from outside and started giving him funny looks.

"I should...go," said Hayner.

"Fair enough. Dinner should be ready in an hour or two."

* * *

Outside was beautiful, so beautiful, when you were inside most of the time. But it began to lose its charms soon enough.

"Hey," said Hayner. Seifer had taken a break from hauling rocks.

"What's up? Geezer send you out here to help me?"

"Naw. I came out of the kindness of my heart. It hurts me to see you in pain."

"Har-har."

"I try."

The sun was ugly. Sunsets were ugly. There; he'd said it. It was like a toddler had come through with a bucket of orange paint and just tripped. None of them were the same because nobody knew what they were doing – the sun was shouting and tired, giving up everything it had left so it could be alone for the next twelve hours. _Take it. Take my light and my energy and all my other shit. I'm done._ Sunsets were awful.

Hayner didn't actually have anything to say to Seifer. He was just sort of...there. He sat down on the half-finished rock wall, kicking his legs back and forth, staring out at the forest. "Vexen said dinner's in an hour or two," he told Seifer, who sat down next to him. Not too close.

"Mmkay. Anything we have to do?"

"I don't think so. Except for the usual stuff. You know, pump some water, weed the garden, make sure nothing's broken..."

"Get the eggs from the adorable chicken coop and go on adventure with Fabulous Mister Fox..."

Hayner snorted. "Shut up. We're fuckin' _farmers_ now."

Seifer blinked his tired eyes. "Oh."

"Yup. Communing with the land. Building boats. Talking to the...crows."

"I don't think you know what a farmer is."

They shared a funny moment of eye contact before laughing. "No. Hey. Say something farmer-y," said Hayner.

"Uh. Looks like rain," said Seifer, pointing to the clear sunset sky.

"You're a moron," said Hayner. He must have come out here with some clear intention – to probe the waters, to make sure he and Seifer were still...them. He didn't have to now. They were okay. They always were, in the end.

* * *

That night, Hayner was only just getting ready for bed when damn if it didn't start to rain. A hard, determined sort of rain, a clear-your-head rain, but nothing harmful. A turn-your-coat-up rain, but not a seek-shelter rain; it thudded, dull and purposeful, against the windows and the roof.

And while he was tugging on pajama pants, and looking for a decent shirt, Hayner realized he wanted to be in it. Some bizarre whim – he wanted to stand out in the rain, hands in his pockets, on the steps to the porch, until the annoying fuzzy points of his bangs were wet and dripping. He wanted that slow feeling when a drop condensed between his eyebrows, traced its way to the point of his nose and collected on his lip before the tickling became too much and he licked it away. The glorious sensation of soft-water clumping together his eyelashes and the damp, clean smell and the paths that rivered down his arms.

He couldn't get it out of his head. He wanted to stand in the rain, cold and soaked through, then come back inside knowing he could towel off and get into warm, dry clothes and a warm, dry bed.

Seifer had already collapsed on the bed, shirtless though it was barely early spring. Hayner figured nobody would notice.

So he went.

He stood outside, and tucked his hands into his pockets. He looked up: a drop ghosted across his nose, then another over his forehead, and another and another, until he felt them dance on his face. The rain got harder, and he felt his clothes begin sticking to his skin.

And it was wonderful, the standing and not doing anything with his hands in his pockets, content with how he could go inside and be warm as soon as he wanted. But it was good to be so cold. The coldness crawled down into his belly, and cracked, drilled itself into his bones, frozen there. He sucked in a big, shaky breath and shivered.

"What are you doing, Hayner," he muttered to himself. "You'll catch your death out here! You'll get all sick and have to stay home from school."

He sighed.

In little patches of moonlight allowed by the trees, he could see the rain. Heavy and shining like good rain did. He licked his lips. Rain was one of those things that didn't change, no matter whose city you were hiding in that night. It was soft and clean and ran down his chest, and all the rest of his depraved self.

Open-mouthed, he faced up. He closed his eyes to let a thousand tiny marbles plink onto his eyelids. He didn't think at all.

He stood there for a long, long time, feeling the water. He thought about Seifer's thumb across his temple when he'd thrown up. _This can't become a thing._

Petrichor.

Vexen had told him about it, last time, staring out the window. That soft-water smell in the air after rain: petrichor. He'd said something about its origins, but Hayner hadn't cared; petrichor sounded like the name of an ancient beast that turned you to stone at will.

"You'll get an awful cold," he said. "You're just a boy. Stop trying to make nature seem so great." Stopping himself here, before he went completely off, seemed like a good idea; he stepped inside and toweled off his face before clattering upstairs.

He crawled carefully into the bed, which was nothing to be sneezed at, since the mattress squeaked like a cornered mouse. Somehow that didn't wake Seifer up – or at least, not enough to get him to turn around, still hunched on one side with his bare back protecting his insides.

Hayner sprawled out and let the rain tickle him. Down the slowly waning curves of his ribs, the stringy muscles connecting his neck to his shoulders, down his eyes and over his cheeks.

"Way to get the bed wet for no reason," Seifer groused.

Oops. So, not all that asleep after all.

"Man up. Just water."

Sighing, Seifer made a big show of turning around where he lay to face Hayner, and propped his face up on his palm. "Why did you do that?" he asked.

"Do what?"

"Go out there. I saw you. You just stood there." It was almost an accusation, the way he said it.

"I just...wanted to. I don't know. Christ, what's the big deal?" said Hayner.

A slight pause drifted from Seifer's mouth, like there were so many things to say and finding words was too hopeless for trying.

"Just thought we'd been rained on enough lately," said Seifer, getting all quiet again and sucking the fight out of the conversation.

Hayner didn't have anything to say to that, so he kept silent. An awful lot of things happened around Seifer, but this wasn't usually one of them – the silence, when they were both awake and staring at each other, not distracted by anything else. Hayner wondered how it was in five years he'd never really, properly looked at Seifer when Seifer was looking back, because it was one of the most peaceful things in the world. Sometimes he'd ask himself why they stuck together. Seifer was hateful.

Maybe this was why.

Cold, wet, petrichor drifting through the windows like the air had been scrubbed with leaves. Hayner felt dust settle on his belly and arms. Seifer wasn't anything but some pale blue shadows, darkness, and the whites of his eyes. But he seemed to know that this wasn't a talking time. He inched closer to Hayner, and flopped out an arm to settle on Hayner's chest, and put his head on Hayner's hand.

"...it would be nice," he said. "If we could solve all our problems this way."

"What way?" Hayner whispered.

Seifer shook his head. The fine locks of his hair brushed against Hayner's hand, making something jump low in his belly. "Just...this way," he muttered. It was more of a vibration than a sentence.

Hayner rolled over onto his side to face Seifer, eyes to eyes like a string kept them attached. His face was so close, his mouth was so close.

From somewhere dark and cold bubbled a foreign urge, rising up his throat and spreading to his whole head, starting at his lips. He buzzed with it.

A certain majesty, a forbidden quality, hung around Seifer. He was just...Seifer. No touching. Seifer wasn't human; you couldn't look at him objectively no matter how you tried. He was just...there. A fact of life, an inevitability like moving on and raining and those little tan moths that always found windows in the summer.

So, Hayner quashed the urge. He didn't think he'd be rejected but – but he couldn't, not to Seifer. The universe would implode.

He huffed and closed his eyes to break the moment. The rain had just put him in a funny mood, that was all. It would go away by morning. By morning, he would not wonder what it was like to be rolled underneath someone and have the rain licked off his eyelids.

* * *

He was right.

Hayner woke up and saw this:

He was about twenty years old, and eleven years ago he'd had to leave home because there was no more food being imported, or trash being taken away. Five years ago, he and Seifer were alone together, so they'd paired up without talking about it. And they'd putzed around in cities, under the noses of angry smiling men, for as long as they could until one man smelled them and chased them away. And now they were here.

Okay.

Okay.

Now what?

Well, his mouth tasted like dry paste, so he should go gargle some water and see what they had in the way of breakfast food. They couldn't even manage something as simple as bread with what they had, but you could find all manner of seeds and nuts when you had somebody like Vexen telling you what to look for – nuts sounded pretty good for now, and then he'd probably get forced into something dull like chopping firewood or fixing the hole a mouse had chewed through a cabinet.

When he peeled off his shirt, stiff after drying from the rain, he felt an uncomfortable wave of self-consciousness. He'd never been shy before: nakedness was a fact of life, just like tan lines were, and they'd never once had one of those awful junior high moments like "wow, I'm seeing him _naked_ and he's not even my _cousin_ or anything."

_It would be nice...if we could solve all our problems this way._

Last night they'd been stupid words, pretty fucking stupid words, but in the daylight they seem to have found an accidental beauty: wouldn't it, though? If we could build a boat with wings, and then life would be wonderful. Hayner thought about that. He thought about being all up above the things, but not a falling dream. An actual, real thing that he could sit and stand and walk around on.

"Hayner?"

It was a quiet voice.

"What?" he said, just as soft.

"...um," said Seifer. He rolled over to face Hayner, still lying on the bed, with his arms tucked around his middle and careful neutrality on his face. Briefly, he met Hayner's eyes, but he must not have liked what he saw because he glued his gaze to the pillows after. There was something very pitiful about him. Seifer had curled up on himself, keeping all of his insides in by binding his arms over his stomach. This was the man who yesterday strained in the sun, clean hard lines and a relentless persistence. The guy who spat in the face of gang leaders and called Hayner a dumbass every day, and who had to decry everything as pointless before he'd accept it. And here he was, sad and soft in grey morning light.

Hayner couldn't help it: he sat down on the edge of the bed, facing Seifer, and scooted over to lie next to him. "What is it?" he asked.

"Don't you ever get scared?"

Oh.

It was such a quiet, sweet sentence that Hayner almost didn't know what to do with it. What could prompt Seifer of all people to ask it? Nothing particularly scary had happened to them in the last few weeks. Seifer was scared, and that terrified Hayner: he'd operated under the willful misinformation that Seifer never got scared or lonely. Because it was easier to believe in somebody who never got scared or lonely. If Seifer got that way, how could Hayner honestly think he knew what was best?

He slid his hand across the covers and took Seifer's fingers, prying them gently away from his chest. "Scared of what?"

"That we'll...we won't get past this. You and me. Make all these fancy future plans and then we'll die without getting there."

Things stopped for a while. He tangled their fingers together so they couldn't tell whose were whose.

"Yes," he said.

"What're we going to _do_ Hayner? Jesus. What are we going to _do_?"

Hayner had a thousand answers for that, and they all sounded pretty good. We'll keep going, we'll do what we've always done, we'll stick together, we'll build a boat and let Vexen lead the way.

But he didn't believe it.

Vexen would probably kick them out. Or die. They'd bitch about it for a while, about all the lost opportunity, then they'd move on and find a new city and live day to day, never thinking of becoming anything more. And then one of _them_ would die, and the other would – break, and he'd die soon after. That was just how they were.

"I don't know," he said.

"I love you," Seifer said.

Hayner stayed quiet, playing with their fingers for a few minutes. When the sun was high enough in the sky to warm the room a little bit, he gave Seifer's hand another squeeze, then got out of bed and finished getting dressed.

Seifer would feel better. He'd get fixed up, if Hayner gave him an hour or two. He'd be back to normal and either he'd never mention this morning again, or he'd crack an awful joke about it. "Haha! I can't believe you didn't just punch me in the face this morning. Swear to God, if I ever start acting like a whiny bitch again, just punch me the the fucking nose. You're such a goddamn bleeding heart."

* * *

Vexen had a proposition for them at breakfast.

"Nothing major," he prefaced it with. "I'm not asking you to trek up a mountain and bring me back a rare flower or something, of course, but it _would_ take you several days there and back. I imagine you two would be well-suited to it – I mean, you must be getting bored being here all the time. Monotonous."

He poked at the roasted potato on his plate, scowled, and looked across the kitchen table at the two blond boys. They had identically deadpan eyes.

"Um," said Vexen. "A response would be appreciated here."

"You haven't told us what it is."

"Yes. Getting to that part."

Hayner licked his lips and started to tap his fingers against the table, breakfast untouched. "We don't have to..._slay_ anything, do we?"

"What? No," said Vexen, raising his eyebrows. He glanced at Seifer, who only shrugged and admitted, "You did kind of make it sound like a quest."

"Well, it's not. Not that sort of quest, anyway. Just a run to the city to get some things I can't make out of scraps and pebbles," he set his fingers on the map which lay innocuously on the table by his plate, "It shouldn't be very difficult. Just a little time-consuming. And it's good for you to know where the city is, just in case."

_In case of what,_ nobody asked.

He slid the map across the table, gave it a flick to turn it around when it reached Seifer's hands.

As maps went, it was awful. It wasn't yellowed with age; the ink wasn't a faded black; there were no drawings of forests or mountains or tall buildings. It must have been traced from a roadmap, the kind that had confused Hayner when his parents consulted them in the front seat of the car, and it was drawn on white computer paper with blue ballpoint pen. Hayner certainly hoped Seifer knew how to read a map, because he'd sure as hell never been taught how to do it.

"This is a temporary little thing. I've only drawn the path you need to take to get to and from the city, no extra stops on the way. Oh, I drew in the river – that wide band off to your left, where I sort of scribbled it in? The scribbled bit is the river."

Seifer pinched his lips and looked over it, without a glance in Hayner's direction. He was grateful, for once, not to have those eyes on him – especially not after this morning.

_I love you._

Fuck fuck fuckety fuck fuck. He'd sounded like a scared little kid.

"So...we're going where, exactly?"

"The area circled in black ink, labeled 'city'. You – you did say you could read, didn't you?" Vexen looked suddenly apprehensive, like they'd mentioned they couldn't and he'd offended them now.

"Oh, yeah," said Hayner. "Yeah, we can read that much at least. I'm guessing we're the place labeled 'home' with a little house on it." It was a nice little house, a square with a triangle on top and a chimney with a black curl of smoke. That about did him in, the little house with the smoke, and everything. He felt a sudden rush of – protection, of affection from the other side of the table that wasn't entirely misplaced. This man had drawn them their little map, traced it from a road map and left out all the roads, and then he'd gone and drawn a little house for them near the river between a couple of rounded mountains. He hadn't had to. He could've just made a circle and labeled it "here". But he'd drawn a house with chimney smoke and called it home.

He must have had kids, this guy. Or nieces and nephews. Something.

Seifer hadn't said anything yet, to him or to the man across from them.

"Seif?" He made eye contact. "What do you think?"

He licked his lips and shifted between Hayner and the map. "...didn't know there was a city a few days' walk from here," he said eventually.

"Well. It's in the opposite direction from where you said you'd come. I suppose I'd forgotten to mention it – I mostly keep to myself, don't see the need to visit it. But, still."

"Right." Shit. Seifer had that look about him, a disbelieving glance to his eyes, a smirk where he leaned back in his chair a little and got this inkling of kingly authority that made Hayner wonder, _would he be a Marluxia if I let him go_, and he laughed between his words: "And you thought we didn't need to know that if we'd walked two more days, we wouldn't have had to stay here at all."

Vexen seemed – honestly surprised. As if it hadn't occurred to him at all that maybe they'd prefer a city to his house. Hayner could hardly blame him. If this city was anything like the one they'd come from – he'd hardly blame him.

"I..." He drew in on himself, tucking hair behind his ear, fiddling with the rims of his glasses and keeping his eyes on the table. "No. I hadn't thought of that. I'm sorry. I had assumed – "

"Big damn leap, assuming that about people you hardly know," Seifer said, tilting his proud chin.

"Yes," Vexen said. "It was." He lifted his head and set his eyes on Seifer, patient and coiled.

"Dunno about my – about Hayner here, but you sure as fuck had me convinced – "

"Yes. And I've apologized. I think we'd be a lot more productive if we could just move _on_, Seifer," he tacked his name on there almost like an afterthought. What a proper teacher this guy would've been, with guilt trips and everything. I'm very disappointed in you. This is not what this institution is about.

"Right, yeah, and I'm asking you to fucking listen to us for once instead of coming in with your mystical magical save-the-world bullshit, okay, buddy? I'm just saying you always made it sound like you were totally cut off from everything and actually we're like two days away from what you say is a city. And I don't know about Hayner but to me it sure seems like you didn't show us the whole picture in case we decided to fuck off."

Something hard and cold and ugly blurred Vexen's eyes, a dangerous snake thing when he sat up straight and put his hand on the table. "Would it have made a difference," he asked, "If I had told you about it?"

Hayner had watched Seifer's arguments spiral out of control before, because he didn't know when to shut up and stop spitting in the face of a very big man with a gun, and he didn't want to watch this devolve. "I doubt it," he said, quietly as he could. "We left the last city for a reason. We would've run into the same problems in the next one, I guess. At least here we sleep in the same place every night."

Seifer snorted at that, but true to form his stiffness faded and he relaxed into his chair, leaning back. Their eyes met: _all right_, said Seifer's face, set and firm but not hard, _I'll let you have this one._

"Well, I'm glad to hear it," Vexen sighed. "For a moment I thought I'd been wrong about you two, and you'd been looking for whatever work paid best when you found me."

With a laugh, Seifer twirled the map around on the table. "What, you mean like thugs or drug mules? Hayner would _suck_ at that, lemme tell you. He would go up to threaten somebody and just be like 'but only if you don't _mind_ because I wouldn't want to _inconvenience you_ or something' and then he'd wuss out and probably give them his gun as an apology. You totally would."

Hayner thought about it for a second, and figured that, yes, Seifer was trying to fix things with the strange old man across the table, even if he did have to step on Hayner's pride to do it. So, okay. "Pfft," he said. "I like that you think they'd even let me have a gun in the first place."

Vexen laughed. "I'm sure he'd nick one for you," he said, gesturing at Seifer.

"Are you kidding? He'd probably shoot his face off trying to load it."

* * *

Before they'd been sent on their way, Hayner'd had the good sense to ask this: "What if we get, um. Lost."

To which Vexen had said: "Yes?"

"Well, if we get lost and can't find our way anywhere, what do we do?"

"The usual suggestion is to become un-lost as quickly as possible."

"Vexen, I'm serious! Don't you..."

He'd leveled Hayner with expectant eyes. "Don't I what?"

"Have...something for that? A GPS machine or something?"

Then Vexen had given him one of those looks, the kind he got when Hayner made an After Generation mistake like not understanding that pasta came from a wheat plant, not a pasta plant, or thinking that plastic came from melting rubber and letting it harden in a mold in a different shape. The looks were a funny mix of pity and disappointment. Poor Hayner, growing up in a cut-throat world that never taught you anything but survival, thinking "GPS machines" were as easy to make as compasses.

"A GPS navigator requires electricity, not to mention a lot of sophisticated equipment used in a sterile environment. And I know you asked if this was a quest, but that doesn't mean I've got a magical stone which glows when you're pointed in the right direction, yes? You'll have to do it the old-fashioned way."

Hayner sighed. "Which is?"

"Trial and error." He grinned and thumped Hayner on the back, right above his backpack. "But I think you two'll manage, don't you?"

"You're in a good mood," Hayner accused him.

"Of course. Always am, when I feel the air's been cleared a little."

Hayner had just fixed him with a withering glare and run to catch up to Seifer.

* * *

The forest was hardly different at all from what Hayner remembered, not that it would be. There were still fucking _trees_ everywhere. It didn't take long for him to dodge scratchy, shin-high bushes on automatic, or to begin his caterpillar motion of slowing down to check out a funky mushroom and running like a madman to get caught up with Seifer again.

He stuck his hands in his pockets, glancing next to him and shifting the weight of his camp pack. It felt weird to be carrying things in a pack again.

"So," he said. "How's life?"

Seifer hitched his thumbs around his backpack straps and stepped over a fallen tree. "What, in general?"

"Well. I mean, for you."

"You should know, you fucking live it with me."

A mysterious hole in the ground distracted Hayner briefly, though this time Seifer stopped and waited for him to finish. Hayner knew it belonged to a mouse or a rat or a mole or something, but there was something very endearing about a burrow full of furry things. He couldn't see two inches down it before it bent, and anyways a maple sapling got in the way and kept brushing his face with tender green leaves, so he stood up again. "Just...making conversation," he said.

"Hn. Weird way to do it," said Seifer, setting off again.

"I figured I'd build up to the good stuff," said Hayner.

"And what stuff would that be?"

They were skirting a mountain, now; Hayner had to scrabble over a long expanse of warm rock before jumping down onto the soil again and almost letting Seifer's question go. Instead, when he jumped off, he turned around to give Seifer a hand and looked up at him. He let that do the talking. _This morning. Yesterday. The rain._

They didn't say much after that for a few hours.

Holy shit, though. It was a fairytale forest. The tree trunks were so big that Hayner's arms would probably only reach halfway around them, if that. And the _smell_, jeez, the smell which was probably made of dead leaves and dead squirrels and decomposing branches but was still so warm, brown, and solid that he didn't mind it. The place was riddled with wonderful things. A little orange newt underneath a rock, a beetle nestled in the bark swiveling its antenna in meditation, a spattering of bell-shaped white mushrooms on a fallen log. Not that Vexen's house didn't have wonderful things, but they were usually pickled, or in books, and everything just sort of ran together in his mind as a fermented tan blur.

But, here. It had – it had never seemed this big before. Maybe he'd spent too much time indoors.

"Hey, check the map for me?" Seifer asked, thwapping him on the shoulder.

"Uh. It's in my bag, can you get it out?" said Hayner, offering his back to Seifer. "The second-smallest pouch in the front."

"Hm." He held still while Seifer worked the zipper and pulled out the map. "Okay. So the pavement is like a dozen yards to our right," he said, "And the river is near that, and we're on the tail-end of the mountain. So that puts us like...here?" He pointed to a point on the ink line just past the jagged edges of "small mountain".

"Yeah," said Hayner, who didn't really care. "Looks like we're about a third of the way there? Maybe a little more?"

"Hn." Seifer was leaning over his shoulder, his eyes bright and focused on the paper. He was only twenty, but no trace of baby fat hung on his cheeks. He was as hallow, jaded, tired as a man twice his age, and twice as wary.

There were a few things Hayner wanted to say to this man. He and Seifer were glued at the hip but Hayner couldn't shake the feeling that Seifer just didn't give a _shit _about him. He could be anybody, he could be a twelve-year-old girl or a thirty-year-old man and Seifer would make the effort to protect him, because that was what you did. Hayner was Hayner but he wasn't important. Just...tagged along, being friendly to people to smooth over Seifer's surliness, but he could be anybody.

That's what he was, wasn't it. The man on the sidelines, cheering on the heroes as they flew past: go Roxas! Seduce a rich bastard, twist him around your little finger, you're set for life! Go Seifer, protect the innocents, fight the bad guys, never give up! Go Vexen, build a blimp, get your blond helpers to get you materials, you can change the world!

You'd think all these problems would seem so much smaller next to the question of survival. Maybe they were – maybe when Hayner was starving, his stomach caved in and he waited desperately for someone to take pity in a town full of people just like him, he hadn't cared whether the starving boy next to him liked him or not.

Pretty bad fucking deal just to get away from paranoia.

But still, through his mind: _Oh, Seifer. You poor thing. You sad, sweet, lonely monster._

"Let's stop at sunset," said Seifer.

"Yeah. Okay."

Hayner must have done something wrong, or off-putting, because Seifer squinted at him and gave him an "...o-kay..." before slowly withdrawing the map and crumpling it back into Hayner's bag.

"What? What's wrong?" Hayner asked. He kept the thuds of his boots even with Seifer's while they trudged over roots and poisonous vines.

"You were just _staring_ at me," said Seifer. "It was a little creepy. You're not gonna puke again, are you?"

A terrified rabbit dove into a bush by his foot. "What?" he said, distracted. "When the fuck did I puke?"

"Last time we were out here, walking to Vexen's. Remember? You just fell onto your knees and vomited." And then, almost as an afterthought, "...really freaked me out."

"Oh. I'm so terribly sorry my impending tuberculosis made you uncomfortable."

The path was narrowing now, the spaces between the trees getting smaller as they were squished into a valley, and Seifer held a branch out of his face in front of Hayner only to let it smack him in the face when Seifer released it. "Tuberculosis makes you cough up blood, you _asshole_," he said.

"So? Maybe my blood looks like puke."

"You're fucking foul."

Hayner just laughed.

* * *

At night, he marveled, forests could get pretty goddamn terrifying. It was all well and good to stare outside from your window and think about the moonlight hitting the tops of the trees, or the wind rustling the leaves, or the sweet mysterious animals which darted between branches and tittered at each other. It was another thing entirely to realize that you were surrounded by _black_, that really, sometimes when you were walking, the treetops let no light through at all. The world revealed itself inch by inch, as his night vision only gave him the vague shape of a bush before he walked into it.

Sometimes he'd walk right through cobwebs, or at least, he hoped they were cobwebs – light airy string that revealed itself more in the tickling pull than the actual substance. And even after flailing like an idiot, he knew there was probably still some on him. Which made him think: what else is out there in the trees, waiting to swoop down on me? What already has? He imagined a tall, silent, pale man appearing like a flash in the darkness. A man who'd been tracking new prey for days, who laughed at their awkward bumbling through the trees.

But even without that, the sheer possibility of the darkness in the forest was starting to get to him, desperate as he was to keep up with Seifer. He considered the ramifications of asking to stop. They wouldn't get there as quickly, maybe, but he knew they'd have to stop and sleep eventually – there was no sense in stopping from exhaustion in the daylight, and besides, they'd been walking for _ages_. But then, Seifer would call him a weakling, and a lamer, and ask why he had to stop every five minutes like a toddler going on a hike.

Maybe Seifer was tired too.

Maybe not and Hayner would get yelled at.

Fuck, at this point he would settle for polite conversation – anything to get the imaginary eyes of the hunting man off his back.

"Hey, Seif?" _You fuckwit. 'Seif'. Called him 'Seif'. This will go over poorly._

"Yeah?" said Seifer, stopping on a tree root.

"Uh. Wanna just call it a night?"

He didn't even hesitate, and Hayner couldn't decide if that was good or bad. "Yeah. Definitely. Sure. Pick a spot."

* * *

They actually set up camp now. They didn't just fall to the ground, too exhausted to keep walking, content to lie in the grass with their wet clothing drying between them. Vexen had given them a lighter, and a book about surviving in the wild (complete with pictures of which mushrooms would kill you), and blankets. So for once in his life Hayner felt like yes, fucking finally it matched up with adventure stories. You walked all day and ate bread and cheese and then made a fire and talked.

He and Seifer didn't talk. But they did sit around the fire, which was good enough.

Crouched in front of the fire, his hands dangling between his knees, Hayner set his eyes on Seifer.

He hadn't thought about his partner this much in all the time they'd been at the house, but leave for one day and he was back to his old ways. It was worse, actually. Now that he knew they had a home to get back to, Hayner had a name for the thing he was missing; in the meantime, the only familiar thing he _had_ was Seifer. And he wanted – maybe he just wanted to be closer. Not have Seifer on the opposite side of the fire, but right next to him, not even touching, maybe. Or, maybe touching. Shoulders. Or they'd slink arms around each other. Hayner would take Seifer in his hand and tuck him under his chin and keep him safe.

Maybe Seifer was thinking the same thing; it was impossible to tell from his face, stony and indifferent as ever. He stared at nothing at all, or some mysterious spot on Hayner's neck.

"Sorry about this morning," he said. Hayner blinked.

"What?"

"This morning," he said. "I was weird. Sorry."

Hayner took his sweet time in answering, playing it out in his head.

"_What, you mean the gay shit with grabbing my hand and crying for your mommy?"_

No. That wouldn't do. Honesty?

"_I didn't...mind at all. It made you seem kinda...human."_

_Seifer would laugh nervously. "What? Since when have I not been human, lamer?"_

"_**I**__ don't know. It was just cool that I wasn't the only one who felt that way."_

_And then, here, Seifer would pause and they'd make eye contact and sit still for a while. "...guess we do that a lot," he'd say._

"_Yeah. We do."_

_And then there'd be more quiet, because that's how they were, and then one of them would get the nerve to say:_

"_Maybe we could...do it...differently."_

"_What do you mean?"_

"_I mean when we have a problem actually say it, instead of ignoring it, like we actually rely on each other instead of just being around each other."_

"_I'd...yeah. That's...good. Really good."_

But this was reality and Hayner just found a way to cock it up gloriously.

"What? Oh. No, that was no big deal."

Seifer gave him a funny look. "Really?"

"Yeah. It's fine. Whatever."

Stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid. You're fucking it up again. He's giving you a chance and you're fucking it up again because what if he's not, and you fall flat on your face because you were an idiot.

He could see Seifer shrink back from the fire a little and run his tongue behind his lower lip. Hayner didn't know why he bothered, anymore. Their conversations always ended up this way; one of them would extend a hand and the other would burn it out of fear.

"So," Hayner said. "This...city place."

"Yeah. You still have the list of stuff?"

"Yup. Yeah, it's in my bag. Dunno what half the words mean." Vexen had given them a list in his scrawly professor handwriting, and then he'd read it out loud to them, which hadn't helped at all. He'd stopped paying attention when the man got to "hydrophobic resin." The fuck that was.

"Well, I guess we just give it to the guys and hope for the best," Seifer shrugged, shuffling around to lie down on his side a safe distance from the fire. He yawned; the pink insides of his mouth looked maroon and black in the light. "Other than that, we'll just...see when we get there."

"Right."

Because that was how they were. Ad-hoc. Making it up as they went along.

Hayner looked at Seifer, curled up, eyes just wet slits in his face which caught the fire and held it there.

_I want you safe. I want to open up my ribcage and bind you inside me. I want to crawl inside your head and roll into a ball and see the world from behind your eyes where it's safe. Stop ignoring me. _

* * *

It was a city, Vexen had explained, which had no name. It must have done at some point, but nobody used it anymore. Like most cities, the name changed with whoever owned it that month, but mostly when people referred to "the city" they meant whichever one was closest. Vexen said, sometimes this one goes by "electric city," because they have energy and they use it, if not very well. Robots and muggy cars. It was a place for finding mercenaries and trading your shit for more useful shit. The only people who could set up permanent shop in a place like this were the ruthless, the people who long ago had stopped at nothing to stake their claims and now defended them like wild dogs.

Hayner thought Vexen was exaggerating. Human beings didn't _act_ like that, like territorial dogs; they banded together in groups, sure, but he'd seen that with his own eyes. This was just...silly.

They smelled it before they saw it.

"What is that?" said Seifer. "Meat?"

"Christ, I hope it's meat," said Hayner, "Because the only other thing I can think of is charred corpses."

"Well. Thanks, Mister Fucking Sunshine."

"I try."

It was like a huge ugly anthill. The city rose above the forest, surrounded by a crumbling concrete wall with a gate that had been permanently wrenched open, and they could hear shouting from inside. The shouts varied from "Handmade jewelry, found objects and natural beauty from right here in the forest, hey lady, I see you looking, feel free to browse!" to "Bullets! My favorite source recently raided an army surplus store; cases of bullets for any gun you can imagine, best price in the city!"

Then they actually got close to the gate.

Chaos was inside: men stood on tables or under hodge-podge tents, crowding on either side of a paved road where people in fading clothing pushed past each other, thin-lipped and quiet if they weren't arguing or bartering. Further down were the buildings, some tall and modern (if a little cracked), some tiny elaborate shops in brick.

They didn't attract any amount of attention at all: it was too loud, too hectic, there were too many others just like them. Seifer and Hayner stood there, on the brink of the life they'd run away from however many months ago, going into shock from the noise alone.

"Fuck-ing _hell_," Seifer said eventually.

"Let's just...get in and out," Hayner said.

"Right."

Seifer led the way through the street, pushing aside an old man, a stone-faced woman in a headscarf, a girl their age. Hayner hushed quick apologies to them in his wake.

"He said...down the main street – that's gotta be the main street – then the first paved road to our left..." Seifer muttered, switching his gaze back and forth. The worst of the street market seemed to be over; the shops were thinning out, giving way to men with just blankets of things spread out before them. Whores popped up now, not even trying to be subtle about it. They stood by telephone poles, at the corners of buildings with their hands in their pockets, trailing Seifer and Hayner with their eyes. Hayner couldn't remember them doing that before. They'd never been...clients.

The packs must have been a clue; only men with things of value took on the weight of a bag.

Or maybe they'd always been watched, and Hayner only noticed now because it had been so long. A barefoot woman, early thirties, with a short skirt and low-cut tank top leaned against a wall with her legs spread wide; when Hayner made eye contact she licked her lips and began to gyrate her pelvis, humping the air and waiting for his reaction. He shuddered and gulped, curling his hand around Seifer's upper arm. She stopped her motions and just sighed, giving him an "okay, if there's no point to it" smile before folding her arms over her chest.

When the din of the main street began to fade, and the smell of the meat stands with it, the road they were on started to feel a lot spookier.

It was just as brown and dingy as the one they'd come from. But the street was narrower, the bricks, maybe, a little dirtier, the alleys darker. The pavement here cracked and staggered until it melted into the dirt. It must have been the downtown of somewhere, with tall buildings and empty places in their fronts which used to hold glass, old shop windows with mannequins and display cases long robbed of their merchandise. His heart jumped into his throat and stayed there when something – _moved_ - in the space between two tall brickfront stores. A man with smiling eyes and a broad, shiny nose called out from where he sat on the curb, fiddling with a knife.

"He-ey, gorgeous," he said. "You looking for work? Real nice, I could set you up real nice here. Could always use men of such fine caliber as yourselves."

"Don't respond," Seifer said under his breath, keeping his eyes forward.

"I know you can hear me, gorgeous. Come on. You're made of gold. We could do this, no trouble."

"Don't speed up. Don't even let him know – just keep walking," he said, and set tight fingers over Hayner's wrist. He nodded and kept his head down.

Hayner realized just how vulnerable they were, and it twisted a knife in his stomach. A desperate man with a blade sneaking up behind them, whispering his scratchy stubble against their ears, "I'll be taking _these_." A bored mercenary in an alley waiting for a client, lifts his lazy hand, **bang**, "Haha, stupid kids. Probably their first time in the city."

The air around them suddenly seemed filled with weapons, poised and ready to take advantage because Hayner knew, with certainty, that there was nothing they could do if somebody decided they'd look better bleeding on the ground. There was so much empty space around them and death could come from _anywhere_, had he really felt like this whenever he wasn't at Vexen's, _shit_.

"...Hayner," Seifer said, slowing down a little as he looked down a side street. "I'm getting a little...freaked out here."

"Yeah. You're not the only one." A load of rocks was tumbling around in his ribcage. And if even Seifer was getting uneasy, then, well, shit again.

"Let's just stay close."

"Right."

Vexen had said, down the main street, the first paved road on your left, follow that until you see a sign on your right – steel, with words in blue paint: "Highwind Repairs and Trades – we take payment in all forms". So they did. And Hayner could hear his breath in his ears, he could feel the damp sweat in the crooks of Seifer's fingers.

It was clearly an autorepair shop linked up to an old gas station.

When he swung the door open, a bell rang out; he rapped his fingers against the doorframe. "Hello?" he said, looking around the shop. One thing for sure: if Vexen needed mechanical parts, this was the place to go. Shit was everywhere, on the shelves, in boxes on the floor, hanging on the walls. It was like a truck had exploded perfectly at the seams.

He couldn't see anyone, which wasn't saying much: the twists and turns of the brown dusty workings allowed plenty of places a guy could pop out from.

"You sure this is it?"

Hayner snorted and stepped forward, putting his hand on a wooden desk with a lamp. "Of course I'm sure. We need parts. This place clearly f- clearly sells them."

"Is somebody there!" cried a voice, somewhat ragged, followed by " – wait, oh shit, wait wait wait – " and then an anticlimactic clang, like a metal bowl being dropped on a kitchen floor.

"Um," said Hayner. "Yes."

"I can_not_ fucking deal with this right now," said the man in a back room. "One of you go deal with this."

Hayner looked around to see if he'd meant him and Seifer, but the familiar sound of boots on the floor made him realize someone was coming down the corridor for them. He figured, Vexen wouldn't send them to men who'd kill them, at least not without a reason, so that was fine, right? He danced on his feet and waited for the boots-wearer to emerge from the wreckage.

Guy sure took his sweet time doing it, but when he did show, he didn't send chills down Hayner's spine or make him feel like hiding behind Seifer. So, bonus.

"Hey," he said, coming out from behind a corner to their left. "You guys here to deal in parts?"

He stood in front of them, hands in his pockets, tired but not worn down yet. That both Seifer and Hayner had no idea what "dealing in parts" meant, because parts could mean car parts or human parts or parts of absolutely everything, seemed to escape him. He blinked and crossed his arms.

"If you came in to get out of the weather, I'll have to ask you to leave," he said.

"No, no that's not it," Hayner said, and fumbled in his pack for the list Vexen had given them. "We're here to get stuff, uh, materials and..."

"And whatever the hell a canary curtain is," Seifer said, poking at the middle of the list. The shop man laughed and leaned against a table littered with fine tools.

"Do you guys know what you're doing?" he asked them, eyes smiling and crinkling a thin silver scar between them.

"We work for somebody who does?" Hayner offered.

"Ah. Does this boss have a name?"

Names held power, sometimes; mentioning that you were Marluxia's second-hand man kept hands off you where they came from. But Hayner kind of doubted that anyone gave a shit who Vexen was. No harm there.

Seifer must've thought the same thing. "Vexen," he said. "He's a doctor or a scientist or something. He has all these schematics and shit. He just sent us to get his stuff."

"_Vexen_?" said the shop man, blinking a few times and running a hand through his hair. "You're kidding. Skinny guy, long hair, glasses, kinda nasal voice?"

"I guess so," said Hayner, who'd never noticed anything about Vexen's voice.

He nodded. "Wow," he said, and then nodded again. He leaned forward to shout down another one of the halls. "Hey, Cid! Vexen has minions now!"

"The fuck do I care?" came the reply. "Unless they're robot minions in need of an oil change, his ridiculousness does not concern me!"

Hayner still had to resist the urge to hide behind Seifer and wait for somebody else to do something decisive. Being called a minion barely even fazed him.

The shop man turned back to them and held out a broad hand. "Vexen used to come around here for parts all the time. He's probably the reason we managed the first six months."

Seifer, naturally, was the one who took the hand, but Hayner didn't mind at all. "Seifer," he said. "And this is Hayner."

"Nice to meet you. I'm – " and he paused here, the same sort of pause like _my name, for our purposes, is Vexen_, and said "...Leon."

In typical Seifer churlishness, Seifer snorted and said "Awesome. Listen, we just need to get the stuff on this list and leave. Vexen gave us some plants and herbs and books and stuff to trade you, and we want to get going pretty much ASAP." He glanced outside to the street, where it was growing darker, the shadows longer. "Because your city creeps me the fuck out and I feel like I'm going to be raped and mugged if I stay in it past sunset."

Leon gave him a proper Vexen Look at that, like _mmkay silly child, this is why we fact-check things,_ and asked, "Do I know you?"

"Do you – what, me or Hayner?"

"You." Yeah, duh, Seifer. It was always you. It always would be. Tall proud brave stranger with dark sad eyes. Next to him, who would care about Hayner?

Seifer snorted. "Fucked if I know. I don't remember every single person I meet."

"...right," said Leon, smiling tightly. "Never mind, point taken. Can I see the list? I've never heard of a...canary curtain."

Hayner handed it over without a word and waited for Leon to give them his appraisal and tell them that they'd done something wrong. He just _knew_ it was coming, too, like when a teacher graded your math test right in front of you. He raked his eyes down Vexen's slanted handwriting, tutting here or flicking an item there. Actually, Hayner noticed, he wasn't a bad-looking guy. There was none of that wafishness or awful girl eyes that Hayner hated when he looked at his own face. He had small, expressive eyes and a full mouth with near-invisible stubble, and his hair was unruly, thick and brown. Hayner would've expected him to be working in a camping store, selling mountain bikes and all-weather tents and looking rugged.

"Oh, _caternary curtain_," said Leon. "That makes more sense."

Seifer leaned over to whisper in Hayner's ear, arms crossed, "Why does he need a curtain?"

Hayner shrugged and blew air through his lips. He kept his eyes on Leon in case the guy decided to give them an update some time that day. Honestly, at this point, Hayner was sore and tired and had a funny ache in the back of his throat, and he wanted to go home to his bed. Back through the creepy town, which he could deal with (it was, what, a half-hour walk?), and then the creepy forest, and then he would be home and all he'd have to do in a day would be organizing an old library or helping Vexen grind stuff up for...preservation, or something.

He probably should have felt worse for getting homesick after two days away, especially for a place Seifer would probably argue wasn't home.

"Hm," said Leon at length. "Yeah. I can get this stuff, but it'll take me a couple of days at least. Can you guys wait that long?"

Seifer shifted on his feet and scowled, not at all pleased with this turn of events. He gave Leon a thorough once-over.

"If you...don't have a place to stay – "

"Christ, do we have a sign on our backs that says 'please adopt'? We can find our own beds, _Leon_," Seifer said.

Leon's eyes flicked to Hayner for a second, then back to Seifer. "Hey, no offense meant. Just wanted to make sure you guys were okay to wait."

The last thing Hayner wanted to do was spend a night sleeping on trash bags, jumping at every rustle when Seifer rolled over. The second-last thing he wanted to do was go into the forest at night. It was a romantic idea but the reality was a bunch of shadows that twisted into loneliness. But if Seifer wanted something, he got it.

"It's no problem," Hayner said. "We can keep to ourselves for another few days. Should we just pay you when you have the stuff?"

"Yeah, that seems fair," Leon said. "Come to us if you've got any problems. We owe Vexen a few favors."

"For supporting you?" Hayner asked.

Leon laughed, straightened out the paper between his hands, and glanced at a back room where somebody else was clamping up the hood of an old car. "That's a part of it," he said.

"Right – right," said Hayner, not understanding at all but nodding anyway, "We'll just come back in two days." He grabbed Seifer's wrist (not his hand, never his hand) and tugged him toward the door, not making eye contact with a blond who came in through the other door, wiping grease off his hands with a towel. The blond bumped Leon's shoulder with a familiar purposefulness that sparked jealousy in Hayner's throat on top of the homesickness.

That was the sort of thing he wanted with Seifer. To be able to come up behind him and bump shoulders with him, and have Seifer know it was just Hayner, and sling an arm over his shoulders in greeting. Not this tense, silent rivalry.

They left the shop, and Seifer was careful to level one last glare at Leon. When they were fully out of view Leon laughed, crossed his arms, and put his forehead on Cloud's shoulder.

"The circus is back in town," he sing-songed.

"You think?" Cloud asked, tossing the towel on a chair.

"Vexen's building a blimp. Unless you know anything else that needs a caternary curtain."

"Hm." Cloud eased out from Leon's head and jumped up to sit on the desk, taking his hand and matching up the pads of their thumbs. "He seems harmless. So do his helper elves."

"Yeah." Leon sighed and stared at their hands. "Vexen's harmless. He's just a terrible judge of character."

A hand around his neck pulls Leon's face to Cloud's, and he gives him a smile that doesn't reach his eyes. "It'll be fine. For us, at least. At least these – " he snorted. "'Helper elves' don't give me the creeps."

"The little one seemed sad," Cloud remarked.

"Yeah. And the other one seemed constantly pissed off. Remind you of anyone you knew at that age?"

Cloud just laughed and looped a lazy arm around Leon's neck.

* * *

Vexen had forgotten what it was like to live alone in a house built for a family. He should have been a little more used to it, considering how long he'd done so before, but he had a careful memory. So when the boys did leave, he had to stop every few hours and remind himself that they were coming back – or at least that they had no reason not to. And there was nothing wrong with living alone, and he'd gotten on fine before, and all that good stuff.

In his twenties, Vexen had found other people...tiring. He could get along with anyone he needed to, but after a few hours he started pining for the privacy of his apartment and the book he'd left half-read on the armchair of the couch. He could spend entire weekends with almost no real social interaction, and that was fine with him until the next Monday, when he had to bashfully admit to people that he hadn't done anything in the past two days but sit alone in his house and read books and cook food. He didn't get _lonely_, but he got ashamed for not feeling lonely.

But then, Vexen thought about it now, that was probably conditioning. After all, he'd started off with quiet weekend because they were easier, and then they just became a habit – of course he'd rather do that than spend time discussing pop culture with unwashed coworkers in his free time. He saw enough of them in the day.

And now, he'd become accustomed to having loud young people running around his workplace again, getting things done and coming to him for confirmation. It wasn't his fault he didn't know what to do with himself now that he didn't have to feed three for a week.

He scrubbed a little harder at the glass aquarium he'd found in the basement, coated with dust and salt creep but still perfectly useable, and wished for the third time that day he hadn't decided to kill the chicken he'd found wandering in the forest a few years back. She'd made a decent few meals, but it would've been comforting to have something to talk to that could at least blink at you and peck the ground in confusion instead of sulking under a log like the pill bugs. And Vexen certainly wasn't about to go trapping a rabbit or a squirrel for something so stupid.

He sighed and tilted the aquarium, letting the filthy water drain out into the garden. It wasn't as clean as it could be, but it would do.

"No shortage of fish, at least," he muttered to himself, glancing in the direction of the river. "Though I imagine fish make lousy pets."

Three days, and he was already talking to himself. Brilliant.

He felt a little badly that he'd sent them to that city by themselves, but he knew _he_ wouldn't have been able to do it. He'd have talked himself out of stepping foot in the place before he'd come in sight of it. They could handle themselves.

And if they couldn't, well. He'd put up two more crosses in the front yard and start talking to the fish.

* * *

A/N: I AM A BROKEN NITLON, FEEL SORRY FOR ME

I wrote this chapter in. Um. Four days? Which is why it's...the way that it is? I dunno, I'm trying to remember how to write at all.

Also I have a tumblr account, but I don't know what it's for or what to do with it. Somebody help. Okay. I'll go reply to stuff and do more writing now.

If you even just clicked on this update, you have my eternal gratitude.

Review?


	7. Chapter 7

A/N: Listen. I have this thing where whenever it starts raining, I start writing. Sets a good mood, have to stay inside, timing's out of my control so I can't reason myself into stopping when it gets hard. You know. Harmless buffoon logic!

Except it has been raining for nine fucking hours. I think I wrote, like, 70 percent of the chapter in that time span, if not more. So...those are the parts that make no sense.

You're gonna get mad at meeeeee

* * *

With silence favor me.  
(Favete Linguis)  
- **Horace **_(65 BC - 8 BC)_

* * *

Most of the things Vexen had to do today didn't require being outside – they probably didn't require leaving the second floor of the house. After the usual chores of watering the plants, cleaning out the gutters and checking on the rat situation (improving), all he really planned to do was take apart some of the old clothing at the seams. Any small scraps of fabric would help, and it was weirdly soothing to snip away at the threads of a shirt seam until it was deconstructed into its component parts. So at about noon, Vexen settled himself in a lawn chair underneath a tree, and set on a pair of enormous jeans with his thread scissors.

In the four days since Hayner and Seifer had left to get more supplies, Vexen had more or less given up on maintaining mental appearances.

"I should fill that aquarium today," he said to an errant chickadee, pecking forlornly at the ground. "Just with river water, some stones. There's no hope for the filter, of course, without electricity, but it's not as if it's a permanent habitat. And I could always use it for turtles."

The chickadee failed to respond.

"Hm. Some company you are," Vexen told it.

He scowled and went back to the jeans, not for the first time thinking about the size of the blimp. He may have been overly ambitious – he'd definitely been overambitious. After all, he didn't have any experience with full-scale dirigibles. It would be better to start off with something smaller, maybe holding two or three people and some cargo, just to find his feet. All they really needed to do, at this point, was make contact with other organizations trying to rebuild. With luck he might even get some of the landlords to listen. And with more resources could come bigger ships.

He probably wouldn't live to see it go much of anywhere, he realized, but still, it was worth it – at the very least it was something to do. And getting it started would probably be the hardest part, stitching the Western hemisphere back together. He just had to get enough leaders in one _place_, and the lot of them could start to sort things out.

"And then we'll all go for ice cream," Vexen told the chickadee with great conviction. It froze, cocked its head at him, and fluttered up onto the porch railing farthest from him to pick at his breakfast crumbs.

He sighed. A pattern was forming here. Still, he was making good progress on the jeans. He worked the lower fork of the scissors underneath a loop of yellow thread and pulled it out, getting a frayed edge for his trouble. The shade of the tree sometimes obscured his view, so he squinted and pulled the seam closer to his face.

He jumped a little when he heard a "Vexen?" from somewhere back in the woods behind him. How quickly he could forget he no longer lived alone, when they left for only a few days.

"That was fast," Vexen said offhandedly. "Though I suppose you can walk faster than I can." It usually took two days just to get to the city, if he remembered right. They'd had enough time to walk to and from the city without more than a few hours there. Had something gone wrong?

"Vexen." He cleared his throat. Hayner, then; Hayner was the only one who hesitated when he spoke. "I – I...are you..."

He faltered and closed the scissors, setting them down on the arm of the chair. But emerging from the woods was neither Hayner nor Seifer. He was ragged, his shirt stiff with dirt and his pants splashed dark up to the shins. He held his hands carefully at his sides, and scraps from a paper grocery bag wrapped around most of his fingers, smudged with blood.

His jaw was quivering. His eyes were large and red and wet. His clothing was too big for his body.

"Zexion?" Vexen said, not moving any closer. It had to be him – nobody else had that hair – but God, he'd changed. He was taller and thinner, his eyes cased in shadows.

"I. I, I'm sorry. I remembered – when we passed by this house – I mean it was ages ago but I thought maybe you'd – "

"What's happened?" Vexen asked, taking a step closer. Zexion didn't move. "It's all right. It's fine. I'm not mad."

Zexion's chest heaved in and out, like a sob that reached up his neck and stopped there. He choked a little and staggered forward a few feet.

"It's all right, Zexion," Vexen said, and extended a clean arm. "Just tell me what happened."

Zexion closed the gap, stepping into the shade and holding his dirty hands up like he was waiting for a free sink in the bathroom. "I don't want – "

"Please." Vexen snorted and pulled him close, wrapping his arms around him and indifferent to the stains on his shirt. "Please, as if I've ever cared."

He made the noise he'd choked back before, a dry sob through a torn paper bag, and pressed his face to Vexen's shoulder and clawed at his back, twisting his hands in the clean brown shirt. He started to rack with muffled sobs.

"Oh, Zexion," Vexen said, as gently as he could manage. He smoothed his hands down his back, though the motion was stuttered by all the grime in the folds of the shirt. "Look at you. You're shaking like a wet dog."

He laughed a little at that, but it broke halfway through and he gulped in air instead, keeping his nose buried in Vexen's shirt. "It kept...Vexen, it didn't –" he hiccupped. "It didn't _work_, I kept trying and – but I couldn't go _back_."

"I know." He didn't, but that didn't matter for Zexion right now. "It's all right."

"I have to tell – "

"You haven't got to do a thing right now," Vexen said, cradling the back of his head. "You take all the time in the world." He laughed to himself a little and rubbed a big oval on Zexion's back. "God, you were always the calm one, too. Whenever something was wrong I could rely on you to be all right. I can't imagine what's got you this shaken."

For his part, Zexion just seemed glad to have someone to cling to. He just nodded a little and kept his head down, shivering. Vexen didn't make a move; he kept rubbing circles over his back and not asking questions.

His behavior must have been a little disconcerting for Zexion, who'd only ever known Vexen at his worst. Finding a patient man taking apart jeans in a backyard wearing Vexen's face had to be surprising when the version he knew scowled and hissed and belittled. The open air did wonders for a man: removed from his pack, Vexen had indulged the professor in him, and forgotten the meanness which let him survive before. He didn't even have to compete for _funding_ out here, much less a place to sleep. He had the time and the will to cradle Zexion as if he were a child.

"Oh, god," Zexion said at length, breathing in Vexen's smell, which he hadn't missed at all until now.

"I know," Vexen said quietly.

Zexion took one last quiet sob, sniffed, and withdrew. He swallowed again and again to get the lump out of his throat, and his face kept sliding back into a childish grimace to let the sobs out, but he'd improved enough to talk.

"_You_," he said. "_You're_ here."

"You must have headed in this direction for a reason?" Vexen was fine to stay in a safe topic for now. If Zexion didn't want to explain the blood, or the bags under his eyes, or the mud up to his knees, Vexen would talk about the house. He was in shock himself at seeing a familiar face, haggard as it was.

"It's just...on the river. And I remembered...when...a long time ago, when we came by here, and you mentioned you'd like to live in a place like this. I hadn't...thought you'd be here, but I remembered the house, and I'd hoped it would be...empty." He sniffed and wiped his nose on his sleeve.

"Sorry to disappoint," Vexen said gently.

"No – a, aha – no, this is...better. I think." Zexion blinked some of the redness out of his eyes and stared at him. "I mean, if you don't want – "

"Of course I do." He put a palm against Zexion's face and tried as caring a smile as he could manage. "You're safe here, Zexion. Whatever he's done to you, or whatever you've done on your own, you can leave it at the doorstep."

Zexion smiled back a little. He'd gotten taller in the last few years, but he'd lost weight. Vexen ached just looking at him.

"Come on," he said. "Let's get you inside and cleaned up. Maybe you can tell me where you got all those cuts on your fingers when I get them some proper bandages."

* * *

Hayner had been all too glad to get out of that shop, but now that they were out and with two days to kill he had no idea where to go.

"Well, fuck. What now?" Seifer echoed his thoughts, eyeing a tall man in a trench coat and a beard across the road.

Hayner giggled. "Seifer."

"What?"

"I think we're tourists."

"Oh, _god_. What the fuck." He hooked his elbow around Hayner's and headed for the main street, ignoring the other stores with clothes and paper and weaponry. "Why the fuck not. Let's go do tourist things."

They turned at the crossroads, and keep going where they'd come off before, away from the city entrance and toward the center of the city. Hayner had no idea what sorts of things they'd find there – rich man parties, streets full of orphan beggars, movies, the robots Vexen said the place was famous for. He figured that it might be a stupid idea, especially with no real way of getting out of trouble they found their way into, but hey. The advantage of never joining any groups was that you didn't make nearly so many enemies.

"I don't know what tourist things means," he said at length, sticking his hands in his coat pockets. For all that Seifer said he looked girly in it, the black coat was plenty warm.

"I think we wear awful clothing and ask stupid questions," Seifer said.

"We always do that."

"See? Shouldn't be a problem."

While they were talking, they emerged from the dredges of the city as quickly as they'd entered them: this part of the town wasn't beautiful, sure, but the graffiti here was more colorful and a lot more PG than back there. They were coming up on what might even have been a restaurant, or at least a watering hole, with chairs and tables outside leading to a friendly glass-front building.

"You hungry?" Seifer asked him, gazing at it indifferently.

"I don't think we should waste money," Hayner said, wary of blowing what they had too soon. These people probably dealt in trades like everyone else, and Hayner imagined that the fruit preserves in his pack would make decent payment, especially here, but what if they needed it to get out of trouble later, or to buy a place to sleep, or to get information? They didn't know how much the Highwind place would charge, even if they threw in Vexen's favors as a discount.

"Good. Just thought I'd ask," Seifer said.

He blew air out threw his mouth in a halfhearted sigh and kept walking, hands stuffed in his pockets. Hayner eyed the steaming soup being served to a couple of women outside, but he ran to catch up soon enough; Seifer was leaning forward and trying to see something behind the buildings.

"What is it?" Hayner asked.

"Park."

"Really?" Not that he didn't believe Seifer, because he'd sure been shown up about _that_ last time, but it seemed strange that there'd still be a park instead of just more space for stalls.

"Think so," Seifer said, standing on his toes. "It's overgrown. But I can see a fence around it for sure."

Hayner did the same, peering over his shoulder. True enough, wild vines burst through a chain-link fence behind a couple of apartment buildings, and behind them trees reached proudly for the sky. "Go figure," he said. "Wanna go look at it?"

"For two days?" Seifer wrinkled his nose.

"For now, I mean."

"Oh." He stared at it, licked his lips and put his hands in his pockets. Seifer's shirts fit him properly now, instead of coming up over his belly. It made him look more like a grown-up. "Yeah, all right, but I might wanna leave soon."

"Cool."

They made their way between the buildings, not stopping to look at the man in two torn coats begging for food, and hopped over the fence with the practiced ease of the post-urban. And, like they'd grown to expect from badly tended front yards and abandoned gardens, the park looked like it had started off all right and was now straining at the seams. Some of the trees had widened so much that their trunks bulged and folded over the fences; grass flowers stood tall and straight through the slats of the benches. Hayner had finally realized some time last year that life was hungry, and for all the Earth Day spiels he got in elementary school about the destructive powers of _Man_, plants had no problem eating away at their careful landscape planning.

Hayner could just about make out a path, rolling quietly and unobtrusively underneath the vegetation, humming silent apologies for interrupting their photosynthesis. He itched to follow it, at least a little, because this place had better lighting, and more songbirds, and fewer disgruntled badgers.

"Hey, it's pretty nice here," Seifer said. The smallest smile, the vague upturns of the points of his mouth, but it was there nonetheless. Hayner broke out a full grin.

"I like it," he declared, lacing his fingers behind his head.

"You like _everything_ that doesn't try to shoot you," Seifer said.

"I don't like _you_," Hayner said, slanting toward the path and shoving aside a maple sapling.

"Shut up. Yes you do." Seifer's voice sounded farther and farther away the further Hayner climbed into the forest; he didn't sound like he was even trying to follow him. That stung just a little, because Hayner knew he'd follow for fear of being left behind, but he didn't do anything about it.

"Where are you going?" Seifer called. Hayner had found a tree trunk uprooted, draped over the path, soft with years of rot. It was huge; its roots swerved out in big, twisting curls.

"I'm exploring," he said. "Come on."

"_Exploring_," he said, crashing his way toward Hayner but avoiding sprouts. "I'd have thought we'd had enough freakin' _exploring_ to last us a lifetime."

"Hm." He kicked at the trunk experimentally, because nobody had ever told him to grow up and stop looking for gross wiggly things under rocks, but it wouldn't budge. "Nope. Wrong again. Honestly, Seifer, you have no sense of adventure." Planting one foot on the top of the tree, he swung himself over it and stomped onto the other side.

"You're in a good mood," Seifer said, stepping easily over the trunk to stand behind him. He kept pace with Hayner, a couple of steps behind, while they went further in. Hayner didn't know what he was looking for – if he was looking for anything – but he wanted to get the whole park down pat, because it was so much smaller than a real forest. It didn't _feel_ like a real forest. The trees were too far apart; grass still plucked up in between their roots; park benches and pieces of park benches slowly decayed on either side of the path.

"Yeah. I guess so," he said absently.

"Should I be worried? You high or something?" Seifer laughed, clapping him on the back with a firm hand. A dull, warm sort of feeling stayed there, permeating the thick black coat and the thin green shirt underneath it.

"I am high on _life_. I don't _need_ drugs to have a good time. I just need my _friends_!" he crowed and skipped forward a few paces. Through the trees he could see an open area, maybe an old baseball diamond or something. Sunlight drifted over the late-afternoon moisture, and made the grass glitter. He started to crash his way toward it, cutting away from the path – but he didn't want to seem...overeager. He stumbled backward and kept to the pavement.

"That's it. You're ridiculous. I'm breaking up with you."

That did funny things to Hayner's stomach, both the thought of having anything _real, _a relationship or a friendship or something good like that to break up and the idea, even the joke, that Seifer would just – anyway. The weird thing, though, was how he didn't even really care at that moment. He took it the way he thought he should always take it but couldn't: it was a freakin' joke. It meant as much coming from Seifer as it would coming from him: maybe quietly loaded with meaning, outwardly just a peace offering.

"You wouldn't dare. You won't be able to find another man to support you at this age," he sniffed, straightening his shoulders.

Somewhere behind him, Seifer actually giggled, then ran to catch up. "Are you calling me _fat_?" he asked.

"You're sagging in your old age. You look like a manatee in that dress." Hayner spread his palm out against Seifer's arm to should him his saggy, womanly fat. Upon finding well-tanned muscle (muscles that moved like snakes, that Hayner stared at in the wee hours of the morning and _wanted_, on himself or for himself he didn't know), he scowled and squeezed a little. "See? You're disgusting."

"This is quickly going to a weird place."

"You're just scared of not being pretty," Hayner said. He eyed the opening to the field, maybe a dozen yards away.

"Hm," Seifer said, and flexed his bicep under Hayner's hand, which was just unfair. "You heading for that clearing?"

"I was thinking of it." He wondered what objection Seifer could possibly have to something like that, sighed when he gave up.

"Cool, okay. Is it all right if I go check out the town for like an hour? I just wanna make sure I know where stuff is, maybe scout out somewhere to spend the night." He cleared his throat and stared, bright clear eyes, at some place just behind Hayner.

"Oh. Oh, okay. Want me to come with?" Probably he sounded like a clingy little puppy, and regretted the words right when they left his mouth, but oh well.

"Nah, it's fine. Honestly, you look – you look like you could use some rest, man." Seifer slung an arm around Hayner's shoulders and shook him a little and grinned. Hayner didn't know what to make of that, exactly. He just smiled back.

"Okay. Sure, I guess. I'll just...stay here." His voice was strange, he knew, like someone had taken the center out of it, like it was just a high-quality recording. He didn't know _why_ was the kicker; it made sense that Seifer would want to crawl around and proclaim everything stupid and broken before he could settle down, and Hayner _did_ want to rest, and some time to himself seemed great at the moment.

"Awesome, cool, great," Seifer said, blinked a little at the _sheer stupidity_ of his mouth (Hayner assumed), and then shook his shoulder again. "I'll see you soon."

"...yeah."

Then there was this fucking _moment_ where he didn't take his hand off of Hayner's shoulders. Their eyes were glued together, which shouldn't have been something strange but _was_, somehow. Now that Hayner thought about it, they never really did meet eyes, did they? Not without a reason, like to share in an _oh my god can you believe what a freak Vexen is_ moment. But times like this when there was nothing to groan about, suddenly eye contact seemed strange. It was some awful pointless thing to be avoided between men; it served no purpose; the etiquette was to look away when it happened. He couldn't, though, for some reason. Seifer's eyes stayed the same while the face around it got darker and harder and smiled less. In the last five years that hand, five warm, dry, dirty fingers curling around the roundness of his shoulder, had become less something to freak out about and more of a given until it had taken on another meaning entirely, buried too far deep for either of them to look. Nothing had moved in their hearts for so long, now, that Hayner didn't even know how to _look_ for it any more, but instead relied on these tiny moments – cracks in the iceberg – to see it.

Seifer cleared his throat and dropped his hand.

"But yeah, I'll just be back that way if you need me," he said anxiously, jerking his thumb to the city.

"Okay." When Seifer only took a few steps backwards, Hayner rolled his eyes and shooed him with his hands. "Get. I'll be fine on my own for two hours, _mom_."

Seifer cackled, turned around, and headed off the way they'd come. His movements were strong and sure; he stepped with purpose, but not roughness, flatly unconcerned with showing off.

Then he was gone. Turned the corner and Hayner was – alone.

_Shit._

Shit. He hadn't been alone for ages. Not really, _really_ alone, not so he didn't have to worry about someone coming in to talk to him.

It was...nice, actually. Evidently he had learned nothing from after-school cartoons about the magic of friendship.

He entered the clearing and cast around for something to do. Like he'd expected, the faded orange dirt of an amateur baseball diamond still was stuck in one corner although hardier, broad-leaved weeds stuck fast in it. A boulder lay more or less in the middle exposed to the sunlight.

Hayner smiled, and climbed onto it one scrabbling step at a time until he could flop down on the top. He stretched like a happy cat, arms above his head, and savored the ache in his legs from walking too far and too long. Maybe he'd just lie here for two hours, slowly getting warmed over by the sun until he was soft and yellow and glowing inside.

"Hmm," he hummed, wiggling his back on the rock. The heat seeped through his skin.

He felt oddly vulnerable, sitting all exposed and alone, with his precious belongings cast to the side out of his reach. Anyone could come tearing onto the field, kill him and steal his shit before he could even blink. For some reason, though, ten minutes away from the streets, he just knew that couldn't happen. Not _really_. He could get murdered and raped in one of those alleys, sure, where dirt built up in the cracks in the walls and drained into the people. But this place had sun, and sparrows that bickered in the bushes, and grass slowly being replaced by clover flowers.

It reminded him a little bit of going to the beach. One summer, a few days before school started – was it a few days, or a couple of weeks? Something like that – anyways, they'd wanted to go to the beach. Him, and Pence, and Roxas, and Olette. It'd been the cutest thing, scraping together the money to buy tickets for it, and by the time they'd got there everyone and their mom had taken up all the good spots, so they'd gone over to the huge, slippery rocks. Hayner remembered just lying there, sunning himself while Pence tripped on his own feet trying to catch crabs.

He remembered Roxas clambering up next to him, and how they'd both made fun of the other two for getting so excited.

_"Mom says the oil crisis is getting worse."_

_"So? People always talk about everything like it's the end of the world."_

_"Well yeah, I know, but she says that's why our train tickets were so expensive, that's all."_

It didn't even hurt anymore. Thinking about them was kind of _nice_, actually, in a wistful way. But it didn't even hurt that they were all gone. Hayner thought about Roxas being fucked in a tower and getting a pat on the head for being a good boy toy at the end of it. Oh, no, sorry, Axel was _different_, they _loved_ each other.

Hayner snorted.

He'd always known, on some level, that Roxas would leave. He'd even suspected it when they were kids – something about him wasn't suited to Twilight Town, and seemed above the petty squabbles with Seifer. He'd imagined Roxas would lead an exciting life with drama and intrigue and everything. Just not..._this _way. He was still right, though: Roxas had, intentionally or not, seduced a gorgeous redhead and been whisked away to an ivory tower, and what had happened to Hayner? Teamed up with his boyhood rival, half in love, living off of scraps, convinced he'd change the world by building a blimp and going on long walks through the forest. Stuck in limbo while Roxas was probably whispering sweet nothings to his rich lover. Prince of a world Hayner couldn't even touch.

Fuck.

_Fuck_, it was unfair.

He kneaded a hand into his side and trailed it across his stomach, unbuttoning his coat, lifting his shirt to warm his belly in the sun. He felt a decent, lean sort of muscle there, and drew a finger down the line of his abdomen. Hey, not bad. Not exactly a bodybuilder, not exactly Seifer, but not terrible. He hoped Roxas was _fat_, wherever he was.

That was funny; he hadn't even thought about the guy for _weeks_. Months, more like. Had he just not had time to breathe since then?

Not really. He'd just been thinking about other things. Which was good, in a way, because apparently he could think back on times with the four of them and only have the memory of the slow, sad burn in his heart. He supposed if he _was_ obsessed with Roxas, that would be a pretty bad sign. But he didn't want revenge, and sure as hell didn't want Roxas for himself, or even in his life. Roxas was a memory. Gone. Okay.

Okay.

That was one thing down – one thing he hadn't even thought of for ages. He closed his eyes and sighed, running his hand over his abs again. He could be _happy_. If he tried hard enough. If he just decided, consciously, to stop being an asshole to Seifer, all this animosity would just slide away like a shameful snail.

Uh-huh. Because that had worked so _fucking_ well in the past, extending an olive branch and all. Seifer was so clearly eager to be his pal. His fucking _buddy_.

His fucking buddy. There was an idea.

Hayner laughed out loud at that, because hell, sex was always the solution for characters in soap operas to sort out their feelings, so _obviously_ it would work in real life. And he would, what? Throw himself at Seifer when they settled down for the night? Slip a hand between them and whisper "touch me" when Seifer met his lustful gaze? Stare at him and then look away blushing for two days on end until Seifer cornered him about it? Jesus _Christ_.

He wondered how it _would_ happen, if it ever could. It would probably be like everything else that happened to them: sudden, underwhelming, and inevitable. Hayner would have a private little freak out that Seifer wouldn't _like_ him anymore after that, and in the morning they'd both ignore it until they forgot it had ever happened.

He rolled his head to the side, eyes lazy and half-open to stare at the field. A rabbit was gnawing at the grass a few feet away; Hayner watched a blade slowly disappear into its busy jaws. The rabbit noticed him then, and froze in a panic - mouth, ears, nose all petrified with fear and its eyes shining bright at him. Your move, human.

Struck by the sudden urge to assure the bunny that he was an _okay_ human, Hayner didn't move either. He blinked slowly and kept his eyes on the rabbit.

It was almost amazing, the level of stillness this stupid little thing could achieve. His movement had flicked a switch in its brain that just locked it into place, terrified and careful and barely even breathing. But Hayner kept his eyes on it and kept as quiet as he could. He'd had his share of practice with extended silences.

He had no idea why it was so important for the rabbit to stop freaking out about him. It was a stupid mammal. He wasn't exactly barring it from its only source of food - the whole park was rife with weeds and ferns and good things to eat. He just...didn't want it to be afraid of him?

Didn't want it to single him out, more like. If he were totally honest, he just...fuck. Wanted the rabbit to _accept_ him. What the hell? Since when did he care about the opinions of _small woodland animals_? Since now, apparently. Since it had stared at him like he was horrifying, and he wanted to prove it wrong.

Yeah, because that made it normal.

He'd never really thought about...rabbits. This one was beautiful, as far as rabbits went. Its fur lay like a neat, smooth sheet over the whole of its body, leaning and bending with the skin. Its eyes were dark, and he could almost see thin black eyelashes around them - what a funny thought, that rabbits had eyelashes. But there was a kind of...organization to the whole animal, like you couldn't call it perfect or exceptional but it was just a prime example of _rabbit_, plucked from a mold somewhere. A soft brown furry thing with eyelashes.

After a long while - he wasn't keeping track, but it _felt_ like seven or eight minutes - the rabbit started to shake off its freeze. It slowly lowered its head to the ground, keeping one eye on Hayner, and began to graze at a tenth of its former pace like a test run, waiting for the moment he leapt off the rock and pounced.

When he didn't so much as lift a finger, the rabbit inched back to steady munching and at length twitched an ear and ignored him.

Hayner felt...weirdly honored by that, actually, which was pretty incredibly stupid but still true. Maybe this was the real-life version of the test of his pure heart - whether or not a dumb animal gave a shit about what you did. He hadn't come crashing through the brush to ruin their lives; he was all right; don't worry guys, it's only Hayner. It was a terrible way to go about life but it made him happy just then.

He smiled and turned his head back up to face the sky. This place was..._warm_. He thought of the night he and Seifer had spent in an old hardware store, long ago looted of its merchandise, and how cold and lonely that had been. Curled up on the lower shelf, trying to ignore the shaking numbness in his bare toes and the way wind would slither up his spine through the crack between his shirt and pants. Some part of him had always been _cold_, or aching, sore and blistered. And there had always been these smells, like - like the whole city was rotting from the inside out.

Bodies didn't smell bad like rotting eggs. They weren't a little stinky and unfortunate, they didn't reek of body odor. The decomposition radiated a stifling heat, a smell like having your nose an inch away from your own vomit. It was heady and thick and left a taste in your mouth that made you nauseous, pushed down on the back of your tongue until you ran away or threw up. Everything pulled apart and melted down to a thick brown ooze dripping off the skeletons.

His stomach shuddered a little at the memory, but when he breathed in through his nose he got...light. On a cellular level, the plants were probably pretty busy, but from Hayner's view everything was more or less still. The air moved in little puffs and swirls of pollen, clean and sweet and scentless. This wind carried no death.

Hayner sighed, and slid into a dreamless sort of sleep in the sunlight, wondering when Seifer would be back.

* * *

If anything, going into the city alone was _more_ terrifying than when he'd gone with Hayner. At least with someone else next to him, Seifer'd had to put on a brave front. If Hayner was scared, then Seifer had to be the one who kept pushing him on. Thinking that why may have been a little vain - acting like the Big Manly Man to show off in front of Hayner - but hey.

Somehow, when he was with someone else, someone more frightened than he was, he hadn't really thought anything bad could happen. Of course it couldn't. Because what would Hayner do then?

But with his head down watching water snake along the side of the road and into a drain, yeah. Yeah, it wasn't so hard for the scary paranoid things to become things that could actually happen. Going in with Hayner, that was like watching a horror movie and then afterwards pretending that standing in the light would keep you safe. This was more like those intense hikes where the ledges got really narrow, and the space between handholds got too long, and you started to think _I could fall I could actually fall and die here. _He wouldn't be randomly attacked, not him of all people for no real reason, but if he went into one of these motels and paid with food or supplies from a heavy backpack - _…_

He'd been on the other end of these situations. He'd gone through the reasoning: if this dipshit has so much valuable shit that he just totes lots of it around in his giant backpack, he's bound to have plenty more where that came from, and Jesus, a guy needs to eat. Asshole can just go get more from his treasure pile when he comes to.

He'd never stuck around long enough to see what happened to the guys after they were knocked unconscious, of course. Maybe everyone just assumed you were drunk and left you alone. Maybe you got raped in an alley. Either way, Seifer didn't want to find out.

Faint music was coming out the doors of a nearby restaurant, though he couldn't see much through the windows. There was a bar, some crowded tables, and what looked like a stage or a podium at the back, shrouded in a smoky haze.

When he opened the door, he was met with the stench of cigars and alcohol, so he just held a hand up to his mouth and made his way toward the bar. He'd been right about there being a stage, but though it was lit and furnished with a microphone and a stool, the music was coming from speakers in each corner of the room. They had 24-hour access to electricity, and this was what they did with it? Hook up some speakers and some crappy stage lights?

Well, at least they hadn't skimped on the noise level. Whatever was playing - sounded like classic rock to Seifer, but fuck, how could he know - thudded loud enough to shake the floor just slightly, and physically hurt his ears. He felt like his eardrums were going to snap in half. _BOWM BOWM BOWM BOWM BOWM _underneath a crooning falsetto that descended into a growl. He shivered and swallowed, which made weird tiny _shlick_ noises in the middle of his ear, amplified overmuch by their location. The whole thing reminded him of being on a plane when he was a kid - that weird pressure in his ears until a yawn or a jaw crack temporarily dispelled it.

"Hey. Hey!" he shouted at the bartender, who didn't seem at all bothered by the music. Nobody did in the whole place did, actually; they all sat at their tables and laughed and talked and drank like the music was a distant hum. Then again, Seifer thought, if they'd spent most of their lives in the electric city, loud music was probably a relative term.

Of course, their hearing might have suffered for it. The bartender hadn't even reacted; she was still at the other end, leaning of the bar and talking to somebody. She was kind of suspiciously hot for a bartender, he realized; her chest strained against a tight wifebeater that didn't even reach her bellybutton. Nothing else about the place suggested it was _that_ kind of bar, but still, Seifer kept on his toes.

"Excuse me," he said when she was done at the other end. She looked up and flashed him a bright smile.

"What can I get you?"

"Um." A little part of him bristled at her..._bounciness_, both literal and otherwise. This was a woman well-accustomed to male admiration. "You guys got rooms I can rent for a night?"

And he swore to God, if the next thing that came out of her mouth was _Not if you plan on sleeping alone_ followed by a gesture to a curtained back room, he would be out of there before she could blink.

"Mm, sure. Not really my area, though. If you go around to the other door you'll find the guy who takes care of those customers."

Oh. How...succinct and polite. Not really the kind of thing you'd expect from Chesty McMidriff, but okay, served him right for making assumptions.

"What's a night cost?" he asked, hooking one thumb under the strap of his backpack, because _that_ would fucking help if somebody decided to rob him.

"Mm, usually negotiable. He doesn't take money if he can help it. Batteries, sugar, canned food...reasonable, though. How many rooms do you need?" she asked, grabbing an empty beer mug and dipping it in a soapy bucket of water.

"How many beds are in a room?"

"One. Queen."

He shrugged. Hayner was a little guy, and Seifer wasn't huge. "One, then."

"Yeah, don't worry about it. He'll take what you have."

"Right. Thanks for the help," he said, resisting the urge to cradle his ears against whatever had come on next through the speakers.

"No problem." She smiled again, and it reached her eyes, which gave Seifer a pang of something he didn't fully understand. "Hey, stick around a few more minutes and we'll get live music."

Seifer stared at the speakers. His eyes started to hurt. "Uh. Maybe later." If it was a live version of this stuff, he was pretty sure something important would pop.

* * *

Vexen led him up the steps and onto the first floor, careful not to squeeze his wrist too hard.

"We'll clean you up in the bathroom. My lab space isn't really prepared for medical work," he laughed. "It's more suited to preserving dead things than live ones."

"Okay," said Zexion, eyes on the floor. Even at the university, he'd hardly been _talkative_, but Vexen was almost frightened to find out where this new, heavy silence came from.

He sat Zexion down on the toilet and brushed his hair out of his face.

"How old are these cuts?" he asked, taking one shaking hand between two of his own.

"Days," Zexion said.

Vexen nodded, inwardly cursing about infection. There was no need to worry the kid about that just yet, not until he got a good look at the cuts. He slid a washcloth out of the towel rack and ran it under some cold water from the sink, wringing it out before setting on Zexion's poor hands.

He was as gentle as he could be, but the blood was thick and crusted where it had dried around the wounds. It was hard to tell what was a scab and what was a dried streak, scrubbing at the fingers until they began to turn pink. "Nn," he frowned, then reached up to the sink, plugged it, and filled it with three inches of water. On any other day this would have been a tremendous waste of resources - all that clean, filtered water when the last rain had been so short - but this, if any, was the time for an exception.

"Soak your hands in here," he urged, pulling Zexion to sit up and place his hands in the sink. "I'll be right back with some rubbing alcohol."

* * *

Zexion hadn't been attacked or wounded. He hadn't even really been hiding after the first day or so. Weeks alone in an abandoned neighborhood did things to a guy that Marluxia just...couldn't.

He looked forward to Xigbar finding him. There would be something disgustingly poetic about dying in an empty suburb, delicious and anticlimactic. A snuffed candle, rather than a glorious explosion. A whimper instead of a bang.

Xigbar didn't come, but then, of course he didn't come. It wasn't like Zexion knew anything important, or had anyone to tell it to. Of all things, really. Of all things _that_ got to him: Marluxia didn't _care_. None of them cared. Hell, he'd made Xigbar and Lexaeus go drag Luxord's body back for burial, but Zexion? Pff. Leave him to rot in a forest. He could have died a thousand times and it wouldn't matter to anyone.

Vexen had been right about the water - the dried blood was softening up, turning it pink; he rubbed two fingers together and they were almost clean again.

"This'll sting a little, though I don't have to tell you that," said Vexen, coming back in with a wide glass bottle. He shook it a little and smiled at Zexion.

He didn't bother trying to return it, but kept his eyes on the alcohol and his hands in the sink. "Where do you get that now?"

"I know someone who distills it. The whole production is funded by one of those landlord types, you know," he waved his free hand around. "Makes his money off tenant farmers, medical houses. But the distiller sells the excess to whomever he pleases, and I'm happy to take it off his hands."

"Oh."

"Yes. 'Oh.'" Vexen laughed and grabbed the washcloth, uncapping the bottle and holding the cloth over the opening while he tilted it. "Here. Let's see your hands. Sit down."

It was a little nice to be taken care of, even if it was by someone like Vexen, and Zexion just plunked onto the toilet and held out his hands. He looked like a child. Right now it was all he could do to keep staring at the floor and pretending everything was better than it seemed, though, so he didn't really care. Let him look like a child. The house was warm and the ceramic toilet seat was smooth.

He ignored the sting as Vexen began rubbing at each of his fingers in turn, toweling them off. The man worked in silence for a few minutes, and Zexion marveled at his hands: quick, gentle and authoritative. They didn't seem like manipulative bastard hands. It was hard to connect them with Marluxia's sadistic fuck buddy, harder to connect that face.

"Look at me?" he said, nudging Zexion's chin up. He wet the washcloth and started to clean Zexion's face with slow, purposeful strokes. "Zexion."

He met his eyes.

"What's happened?"

Zexion stayed silent for a minute, musing. He could tell Vexen the whole story. He could be overly vague. He could lie outright, or just shake his head and say nothing.

But that wasn't - _fuck_, it wasn't - fair. Experience had taught him that Vexen wasn't a man to be trusted, but then, he'd been the first one to leave. _"You're sick. I'm done. Come find me someday, if you want to try again, but - I'm done."_ Of all people, he'd be the one to get it.

"I...left," he said, eyes on his hands. The cuts were so small now that they were clean; tiny raw-edged scrapes framed by ragged skin. They peppered his fingers, concentrated at the tips, but there weren't all that many of them.

"And good on you for it," Vexen laughed, rinsing off the washcloth with water and wringing it out over his head. With Zexion's hair good and wet, he started to towel him off like a dog out of a lake. "What happened when you left?"

"Xigbar."

He paused in his scrubbing, palms on either side of Zexion's head, to look him in the eyes. The barest corners of his mouth twitched down, and his eyes got a little tighter, but otherwise his expression was blank. "Marluxia sent someone after you?"

"I guess."

"But he had a gun," Vexen pointed out. "Or something to kill you with?"

"Gun," Zexion said and diverted his eyes.

He smoothed a thumb across his temple through the towel. "I'm so sorry."

That made Zexion look at him again. "Why?" he asked.

Vexen frowned and leaned back, folding the towel over the bathtub and handing Zexion a hairbrush. "Why am I sorry you were nearly shot for trying to do the right thing?" he said, mouth a thin line.

Zexion snorted and started to brush his hair in halting pulls. "Just...doesn't seem like you."

"Ah." He sat down, crossing his arms. "Does it not, then," he mumbled.

Swallowing, Zexion paused in his brushing to look at Vexen in his glass green eyes. He looked away again just as fast. "No offense."

The silence sat down on them and blocked anything else Zexion could squeeze out in apology. He would think of something - _You've changed now, obviously_ - but when he tried to say it, some little part of his head said _Don't make it worse._ That instinct had saved him a thousand embarrassments before.

"Well, no matter. I've got thicker skin than that." Vexen smiled stiffly at him and rubbed the back of his neck. "How did you get back here?"

"I just...followed the river," Zexion said. Given Vexen's forgiveness, he thought he owed the man a little more: "I headed downstream, and then I remembered, passing up this way a while ago, when you'd found the house. And - like I said. I thought it...might still be here."

Vexen snorted. "Makes sense," he said. "I'm surprised more refugees from the land of Marluxia haven't ended up here already."

"Well, most people don't get out," Zexion laughed, then cursed himself for it. Vexen's dark sense of humor had probably gone with his malice. Did he _want_ to be hated?

He smiled again, and sighed, and took the brush out of Zexion's hand when it was offered to him. "Remind me - is that the first city you encounter, traveling upstream from this house?"

Zexion frowned. "I didn't see any others on my way down, no."

Vexen didn't say or do anything at that. But he stayed sat for a while, staring at the sink where a knob was slowly coming unscrewed and the door didn't quite close all the way on the cabinet. Eventually he blinked and put that smile on again, meetin Zexion's eyes. "What is it?" Zexion asked.

"Nothing. Pet hypothesis. And it wouldn't matter either way, I don't think." He stood, holding the door open for Zexion. "Let's go get you a change of clothes."

* * *

Whatever the fuck had been playing next door didn't permeate to the motel clerk's office, because when Seifer found it and made his way inside he couldn't hear a thing. The place looked fit for a murder mystery - wooden desk, floor, walls; a little bell to call for assistance and a board heavy with room keys on hooks.

The front desk was empty, and save for a little file room in the back, there didn't seem to be any close place where somebody could be hiding.

"Hello?" Seifer said, taking a few steps into the room for a proper look around. Boots went _blin, blin, blin_ on the clean floor. "Hello-o?"

**_Bing! _**He jumped and spun on one foot, not nearly so smooth as he would've liked. Probably looked like one of those assholes who thinks he's in an action movie. The source of the noise must've been the box next to the door, which he'd taken for a vending machine. Looking at it now, it was an awful lot more like a huge ATM, touch screen and everything.

"...hi?" he said, walking toward it.

The screen presented him with a list of languages, so he poked English and waited for the next screen to load.

_Human assistance is not available at this time. Would you like to proceed with check-in?_

It was in a no-nonsense font, an unobtrusive dark red against a beige background.

There were three options: 'yes,' 'no,' and 'more information.' He hit the last one and waited again.

_This is a fully automated check-in system. Payment will be agreed upon via the system, and collected when a human representative returns to the establishment. The check-in system is guaranteed secure. If necessary, human assistance is available at the hours listed*:_

Seifer glanced at the "hours listed" and then at the analog clock next to the machine. "Human assistance" should've been available for another two hours.

Then he followed to asterisk to its inevitable conclusion: _Hours subject to change._

"Thaaaat's super," he said, hitting the back button and canceling the transaction. "Figures the first city with a regular energy source would use it to be lazy as shit."

"Is somebody there?" The call came from the tiny file room.

Seifer considered saying "No," smudging the touchscreen and leaving, but answered in the affirmative.

"Oh! Oh, well, you shoulda rang the bell." A thin man in a clean white shirt and tailored vest stepped out of the room and slid behind the desk, hitting the little bell a few times to make his point. "Sweetheart rings clear as sunshine, even back there."

"Uh-huh." Seifer, less than amused at this point, just hefted his pack further up his shoulder. What kind of an asshole didn't even stay at his post during what was probably a decent time for business? Next door, a ton of people were probably getting shit-faced and looking for beds.

"Trying to check in with Bessie?" the clerk asked.

"What?"

"Bessie." He hopped over the desk, came over and thunked the machine with his hand, as if to prove how sturdy it was. "Great, right? I programmed her myself. Nothing fancy, obviously, but she sure gets the job done. Knows how to barter, too, though I guess you didn't get that far in the process."

"...no."

"Ah. Shame. Still, better than those creepy talking bots with the faces, right?" He grinned wolfishly, and Seifer tried to bite down the voice that said he was being _charmed_. This guy with his jazz musician clothes and long hair was trying to _charm him_ like an over-friendly shoe salesman. Weird.

"Wouldn't know."

"No?" He laughed and headed back behind the desk, motioning for Seifer to follow. "No, no, that's uptown, I guess. They talk to you and try to help you with every little problem you might have, so long as you'll give them money. Got stopped by one once," he said, rifling through a sheaf of papers. "Grabbed my arm and didn't let go. Glitchy, I guess. And it goes," he took on a halting, robotic tone, "'I'm not - I'm not - trying to hurt you. I am trying to - I am trying to - I am trying to _help_.'" On the last word, he dipped down an octave, mimicking what must've been a dying battery. He shivered, and handed Seifer a piece of paper with a set of rules for room behavior about what he was and wasn't allowed to steal, basically. "That's just wrong, dontcha think? A machine doing that to a person?"

"Guess so," said Seifer. He was more than ready just to get to the whole _paying_ for a room and getting out of there, really.

"How many rooms do you want?"

The bartender had told him already, but he thought he'd double check. "How many beds to a room?"

"One or two. Two's a little more, and the room's a little bigger."

"Just one," he said.

"Cool cool. You new in town?" He ran his finger down a chart and tapped a square which apparently correlated with the key hooks.

"Just visiting," Seifer said.

"Hm. Know how that goes. Do yourself a favor and stay on this side of town, yeah?" The clerk plucked a set of brass keys off the wall and dangled them in front of Seifer.

A little taken aback by the advice, Seifer frowned. "Why?"

"Because the other one's full of fucked-up rich dudes." When his expression didn't change, the clerk elaborated. "You know. Energy hogs. Bunch of young hopeful upstarts begging to get hired on some programming job or energy project. Electric city and all."

"...oh," said Seifer. What he gleaned was: rich men needed energy to live their lives of luxury, and energy didn't come from oil anymore. So instead, they set up their reactors and windmills and solar panels. Hell, it made sense. He must have been aware of it on some level.

He felt like that was probably...news, of some kind. That people were trying to claw their way out of the energy slump, or that not everything had been irrevocably changed when it had all happened. That this period of time, half of Seifer's goddamn life, was...finite. Energy projects and windmills and nuclear reactors and all that stuff. He'd assumed they were happening somewhere, but not...not actually really happening.

Besides, would it be so bad? To stay this way for a little while longer? He and Hayner would just -

He'd been standing there for almost ten seconds, staring at the keys the clerk was holding. Now, like always, was not the time to stop and think.

"Sorry," he muttered, grabbing the keys. "Thanks."

"No problem. You sure you're all right?" The clerk looked at him strangely, so Seifer pushed out a bright smile and pointed to the stairs.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Up there, right?"

"Right." And, while Seifer was thundering up the stairs and out of his line of sight, he thought he heard the man shout something else. Didn't hear what he said, though.

* * *

Hayner was still on the rock when Seifer came and found him.

"Hey," Seifer said, keeping a few feet away. Just cause.

"Hey-o," Hayner said. Hey-o? ...okay. "Mission accomplished?"

"Found a cheap room, yeah. I just gave him a pair of pliers and some mint leaves."

"Oh," he said, and there was a funniness to his voice, pleasant and cool. "Do we have to go now?"

"We don't..._have_ to, I guess," said Seifer, leveling his partner with a look and dumping his bag on the ground. Hayner knew he was a little strange right now, but he didn't have it in himself to care. There was a kind of...calm, here, and it was like he could feel it in his fingers and toes. Buzzing. It was something that worked its way up his neck and into his head. He imagined his brain thick with it, like a spatula had come through and slopped molasses on. Floating in a bubble of clean lemon-fresh organic everything-will-be-okay inside of his skull.

Which made it sound like he was completely fucking _high_, but _whatever_. If there was ever a good time to extend the olive branch to Seifer, it was now, when he wasn't hyperventilating in a shaft or strung out from hunger, puking water into the river.

He smiled and wiggled his toes in his boots. The lining or something must have come loose; he could feel a wrinkle along his toes and a scratchy bareness in front of them. Hayner patted a spot on the rock next to him. "Sit," he commanded.

"I want whatever it is you smoked while I was gone," Seifer said, sliding up to sit next to him. He leaned forward and put his arms around his bent knees. Hayner wished he wouldn't do that so much - curl up on himself. If you gave Seifer a confrontation he'd stand up and puff out his chest and crow as loud as anything. But the moment he didn't feel threatened, the moment he sat down or lay down, he brought his knees to his chest, or knelt, or crossed his arms. Hayner wondered why he did that. He could think of a few reasons, but none of them made any _sense_, not when they were applied to Seifer with his proud face and his posturing and his commanding and everything. The only possible reason was for protection, to keep his insides in, but what the hell was he afraid of sitting on a rock with Hayner?

He just...wished Seifer wouldn't do it so much. Make himself so small.

It was funny. He had spent five and a half years glued to Seifer, worrying about him and thinking about him and watching him all the time, but he'd never really - _really_ thought about him. He'd only thought about how Seifer probably hated him. It was a-all about Hayner when it came to his thoughts.

Maybe he couldn't be expected to look at Seifer like a third-party observer, but still. It seemed like all Hayner cared about was...what Seifer thought of him. Not what he thought, generally.

Seifer was..._mean_, said something in Hayner's heart.

_"Hey, chickenwuss! I hear you got fuckin' **clobbered** in the Struggle tournament. What a surprise!"_

_"Is there **anything** you don't fuck up when you try it?"_

_"God, who the fuck loses a knife the day he finds it? I can't believe you!"_

Okay, yeah. But still - all about Hayner.

Seifer was mean. He was proud, and outgoing, and greedy and selfish. Whenever there was a mosquito buzzing around their room or their camp, he'd clap his hands and kill it in an instant, but he would always stare at the smudge after doing it before going to wash off his hands. Not like he was sad that it was dead, but more that he was curious. Something so carefully compartmentalized and organized and programmed, and he'd reduced it to this useless piece of crap, or maybe just wondering about how it was alive and now it was dead because Seifer had clapped his hands.

One time in kindergarten, Seifer and Hayner had gotten into an argument about whether purple was a cool color or a warm color on the wheel, since it had blue (cool color) and red (warm color). It got so bad the teacher had to send them out into the hall.

He wasn't disillusioned, that was for sure. If anything, he was the opposite. He was a pessimist with justification.

Now that Hayner thought of it, he and Seifer had had the exact same life for the last five years. Maybe - maybe not _exactly_ the same, not really, but pretty damn close. They'd fought the same battles and slept in the same places and met the same people. They had so much common ground, but all of it was so trampled and dirty and dry that they didn't want to talk about it.

If everything were...fine.

If nothing had happened, back then, they'd be in college now, or they'd have jobs. Would Hayner still talk to Seifer?

No, probably not. They'd stick to their own social circles, and once they stopped seeing each other on a daily basis even the anger would fade into obscurity. Hayner would have a girlfriend, and he'd love her as well as he knew how, and probably always wonder if he was as happy as he was supposed to be and then he'd get a job and then he'd...die, he guessed.

Seifer would - probably do the same thing, though if he was anything like he was now, he'd probably go through a couple of really destructive relationships first.

"Hey," Hayner said at length, not really sure where he was going with this. It seemed like a good place to start. "Hey."

"...hi," Seifer said, keeping his eyes on the sky.

He seemed...not angry, exactly. At least, it didn't feel like he was avoiding eye contact.

Some morning, they'd wake up, and it would all be a dream, or some mass hallucination. They would enter college, and Hayner would worry about making friends and being well-liked. He would navigate social niceties, and have a drawer in his dorm that got stuck two inches out unless you pulled it at an angle and jiggled the handle. He'd get all these cool ideas for projects, try to paint his bike and end up almost ruining the gears. He'd get drunk with Roxas and have dumb conversations about life and suicide without ever having seen anything or known anything or done anything to warrant them.

That Hayner would probably be envious of this one. After all, this one went on adventures and met new people. He had life experience. He'd seen corpses. He saw a girl stare out over a bridge for an hour before falling, just falling off, as if she'd been making the decision the whole time instead of in just one jump. _This_ Hayner had seen lesbians and people having loud sex in the back of a library. It sounded sexy and adventurous if you weren't the one stuck in the thing, sick to death of fighting quiet fights.

"Hayner? Is everything...cool?"

He thought about reaching out to touch Seifer's hand or his face, or rolling onto this side and resting his head on Seifer's chest. Words hadn't worked for them yet, and there was no reason to think they would this time. But hell, who would stick five and a half years with one person if they couldn't stand them? They must've just been...going about this whole thing the wrong way.

_I want to open up my ribcage and bind you inside me._

_I want to wrap you up in paper and beat the fight out of you._

He had never seen Seifer cry. Never. Not for opportunities lost, not for the people he surely missed. He'd never seen Seifer cry, or break down, or fall in love. The man never even looked like he wanted anything.

"Everything's cool." Lie. Duh. "I just...I don't know. Don't you ever...?" Want to get out of here, want to leave me and go off on your own, want to stand in the rain, want to kiss me with lips that have never touched a boy?

Don't you ever get scared?

Yes; he knew the answer to that one. That morning almost a week ago when Seifer had grabbed him and said _I love you_ like a fucking death sentence. They were really pitiful, weren't they? Pfft. Oh, God, they were really fucking pitiful.

"Do you remember," he said suddenly. "I don't know if you remember but I had a puppy I got from the pound like three months before it happened."

"I remember you bragging about it like a retard," Seifer laughed. Hayner laughed, too, and tried not to overanalyze.

"She ran away like two weeks before. I guess I kind of...forgot about that. But yeah, she ran away like two weeks before the crash." How could he have forgotten? Until that point in his life, it'd been the most traumatic thing ever to happen to him. There was a thing and he was responsible for it and he failed.

Then again, it had gone by so close to the crash that his mind had probably squeezed it out. Who needed runaway puppies for emotional baggage when you had your best friend dying of infection a year later?

(Infection. Fucking infection! The thing antibiotic ointment ads showed as little wiggly lines under a microscope.)

"So? Why's it matter anymore?"

Hayner paused. _Do you think she might've survived? Maybe she went and had puppies and they're running around right now in forests catching squirrels and wagging their tails._

"Never mind. I just..." Fuck it. What was Seifer going to do, _leave_? "Do you give a shit about worms?"

"What?"

"Worms. D'you give a shit about them?"

"Worms? What the hell?"

"Like..." Hayner frowned and stared at the soil. He ran his hand across the bumps of the rock, though he'd memorized them an hour ago. "If you were going down the sidewalk and you saw a worm on the sidewalk, and it'll get stepped on if it stays on the sidewalk. Would you move the worm or would you ignore it?" He wasn't particularly invested in the answer, but here:

He and Seifer didn't really have conversations, did they? They joked, sometimes. But he didn't know what Seifer thought of the world.

"I...I dunno, guess I've never...had to deal with - what the fuck, Hayner?" Seifer turned to face him, one hand on the boulder. He stared down into Hayner's eyes with a tight face and a down turned mouth.

Seifer was...pretty. Maybe not by conventional standards. His face was a little too hollow for his build; stubble darkened his chin, the blond so light it disappeared in the shadows. His eyes didn't belong in his face. It was as if somebody had come along and carved out two eye sockets, a little too sunken and worldsick, and put bright teal marbles in them. If it was weird for Hayner to stare at him so unabashedly, well, blame the dying sun and the trees and the rabbit that grazed for two hours before loping off. He needed to do _something_. They couldn't stay like this, they just - _couldn't_.

"What if it was a bird or a mouse?"

"On the sidewalk?"

"Yeah."

Seifer frowned. "I guess I'd move it."

"Why the mouse but not the worm?"

"I dunno. Mouse is smarter."

"Why's that matter?"

"Who fucking _cares_?" Seifer huffed and flopped down next to him, staring up again with his arms over his stomach. "We've got a hard enough time keeping _ourselves_ off the sidewalks. Don't need to deal with a damn bird or a worm or whatever."

"Yeah. I guess," he shrugged and slid his fingers over a coat button, around the shining plastic rim and down the bottom to the threads holding it onto the fabric, coarse and thick.

As a kid, he'd made it his personal mission in life to rescue worms off of busy roads or sidewalks. Other things too, of course, but mostly it was worms who were the victims. They sludged up out of their dark dirt when it rained, eyeless against a world that had filled with cars and indifferent pedestrians since they had last evolved. Hayner would always nudge them onto the nearest patch of dirt, just because. They looked so sad, flailing obliviously on the pavement. They had no idea what they'd gotten themselves into. And then the day after, Hayner would be walking and he'd see a dead, shriveled up worm and not feel _sad_, exactly, but just annoyed that - that it was dead because there was a sidewalk.

Now, though. He wasn't so sure he could care about a worm or a bird or a mouse. He had seen so many things die already, and the only thing that held on was Seifer, sweet, cruel, beautiful Seifer.

Hayner wanted to care about worms on the sidewalk. It just...wasn't in him anymore. It was gone. He felt a little tiny piece of it today, here, but - it was slipping away again.

"Maybe that's what happens," he said, mostly to himself, "When you're like us. You start off trying to do right by everything and and it ends up being enough just to live to see tomorrow."

Seifer rolled up onto his side again, leaning on his elbow, and looked at Hayner. "What's wrong with you?" he asked. "Why are you being like this?"

Hayner didn't know, was the short answer. Any other day, any other moment or location or situation and he would've died of embarrassment long before this, terrified of what Seifer must think of him.

"I'm sorry," he said, though he didn't sound it.

"Ain't no _sorry_," Seifer said. "I'm just...worried."

He put the back of his hand to Hayner's forehead, like checking for a fever, but then he didn't move it off. Not on purpose, Hayner didn't think: it was like he put it there and forgot about it.

As he'd said. Touching worked better than words did, for them.

He wanted to kiss Seifer and get it over with. It was bound to happen at _some_ point, so why not now, when everything was calm? Before they pissed someone else off, or before Marluxia sent a goon after them for daring to escape from his clutches. They still had a home and a bed, they had fresh clothing and a man with answers.

If they didn't finish it soon, Hayner knew just how it would happen, too. Like all mistakes, in the heat of a moment they'd neither of them seen coming. With luck, something happy, but more likely in a sad time. Somebody would die, one of them would nearly die or be on the verge of it, and they'd finally say _fuck it_ and talk like human beings and seek comfort out of desperation.

Given the male libido, Hayner was kind of astounded neither of them had spent a night with a prostitute yet.

But here they were. Seifer staring down at him, hope eyes and all. And Hayner in this strange, funny mood from his worms and birds and _shit_.

Seifer was so...solid. Skin, then muscle, then a thin little membrane holding together his organs, and bones which held his heart and his head. He was the only thing that hadn't changed. He was still here, for whatever reason. He was still tolerating Hayner and Hayner didn't even understand why.

He curled a hand around Seifer's neck, eyes to eyes the whole time. _Stop me. Please, stop me. Tell me to get off of you and I will._

Seifer breathed, _haa, haa_, out through his mouth, but he didn't move.

So Hayner brought him down.

It was slow and wet, and didn't fix anything. He closed his eyes and ignored the humming in his lungs to focus on the feeling of that thick hair across the soft sides of his fingers, the awkward way their mouths didn't quite fit together but they kept trying. There was no love in it, or at least, none of the romantic kind. This would wake no sleeping beauties. But Hayner felt it as strong and he felt the man on top of him, the pulling, the sense that this had to happen because they both needed it for some reason - release or resolution or the calm before the storm, the mutual admittance of _No I don't hate you god how could I hate you you're everything I have left, never leave never ever leave._

One of them whimpered, deep in the back of his throat. Seifer pulled up, still leaning into the hand on the back of his head, staring at Hayner with red-rimmed eyes. He was just as confused as Hayner, if not more. They'd scraped something buried deep inside; here was hoping they hadn't woken it up.

Silently, Seifer slid off the rock and picked up his backpack, pulling his pants higher up on his hips and staring out into the trees. Hayner followed suit, and the walk to the motel was permeated with a heavier silence than they'd ever had before.

* * *

A/N: Hnng. I dunno.

REVIEWING KEEPS MY CREATIVE JUICES FLOWING.

Really though. Reward me for my attention-whoring. Otherwise, no joke, I get all "OH GOD IT WAS SO AWFUL THEY HAD **LITERALLY NOTHING TO SAY**"

If it is full of problems, let me know what they are so I don't sink into a black hole of silence and mope.


	8. Chapter 8

A/N: best get a mug of tea and a comfortable chair, boys and girls, because this sucker is 12K words of _boring thinky-thoughts_

* * *

Happiness isn't something you experience; it's something you remember.  
- **Oscar Levant**

* * *

Hayner had never been shot before. He'd been stabbed a couple of times, in his shoulder and across his ribs, but hey, life. It'll get you. He wondered how long it took to feel the pain after you'd been shot. Was it instant? Could you feel it tearing through you? Or did it bury itself as far as it would go and then release like a grenade?

The movies had taught him that there was a moment when you didn't feel anything, and then the bad guy looks down at the spreading wet redness on his shirt, clutches at it, looks back up to the hero and says something that makes you pity him for the second before he dies.

"Not like this."

"I'm sorry."

"Help."

_Help._

Oh, no, wait.

That last one was from real life. Guess he forgot.

Haha.

Sweat and faint mist collecting in drops on his forehead, dirt like a messy charcoal pencil collected in the lines of his strong neck. _Hayner, help. Go get some towels. Help._

The room Seifer had booked wasn't exactly huge, but then, what had he expected? Even back before, motels were a place to pass out on business trips, not a place to spend time.

There was a single bed, just about large enough for two people, a nightstand on either side, and some drawers on the other side of the room. The wallpaper was bland as hell. Cream-colored flowers on a grey backdrop, just the kind of sleepy boring thing Hayner had gotten used to.

He set his pack down on the chair in the corner, tickled by a light feeling of _ownership_, grey and transparent. He kept his back to Seifer, who drew the curtains closed.

Pence's death was a vivid memory. Olette was...more of a blur, somehow faster but without the realization. _I'm not immune_.

That was what Pence had been: _it's not just other people who die. It's not just people far away on the bad side of town it is not just your neighbors or the homeless it's you, it's Pence, who used to catch whirligigs and plant them on the playground, he was alive and now he's dead forever._

Forever.

Shit.

He hadn't thought of them for ages. He hadn't thought of his old life in more than a passing way for ages, and now he couldn't get enough of it.

Hayner stared at the bed - pleasant, featureless dark brown comforter and pleasant, featureless white pillows - trying to remember which side he usually slept on. It had become such a habit that he did it by feel now, more than conscious thought. If he went up to the bed and turned off his brain and lay down he'd probably get it right, whichever end he ended up on.

There was no bathroom attached to this room. Down the hall, he'd spotted one coming in, but he wasn't totally convinced it was safe to shower here. If nothing else, they probably loaded their water with chlorine and fluorine and shit to sanitize it. Could be kind of a shock to the system when you were used to rain and river water filtered through carbon and sheer force of will.

Okay, all right, okay. Face the music, buddy boy. Lay it down on the line. Talk to him.

"_So. That happened."_

"_...yeah."_

"_...what now?"_

"_I don't know, **asstard**. Make your own decisions for once."_

Yeah, because that would go over so smoothly.

He needed to shower very, very badly.

Wait, who had died first? Pence or Olette? Pence, definitely Pence. Because Olette just _left_ for a while and came back two months later. That was different. She didn't just die, the way Pence did, from a bullet. She did it real slow. She took her time. She poked a dozen holes in her own sinking ship instead of one in her belly.

But Hayner didn't want to go down there, not tonight; he could feel the memories hovering at the edge of his mind, threatening to steal his appetite, put him in one of those moods. He didn't have _moods_ now. He was angry or content, sometimes a little melancholy, but he hadn't cried since that night in their new room. His emotional range shrunk to a teacup.

He couldn't afford to go someplace high, like a roof or the top of a truck slowly sinking into the mud, and look up at the sky and feel alone but kind of free. Everyone you know is dead and you're not. You can be anybody.

Seifer didn't seem nearly so - upset about anything. He moved as well as ever, pawing through his pack for something and sitting down on the bed. He shifted his weight a little and his ass sunk down on the mattress into the dark comforter, flanked by the little lint pills that accumulated on cheap fabric after too many washings.

"Oh, shit. Shit, I forgot to ask those guys what the materials would cost," he said with a frown. "Can't believe it. I guess I was just really weirded out by the check-in guy for the room."

Really? That was how they were starting this conversation?

Hayner felt like he was wading through really murky waters, and for treasure that didn't exist. "Uhh. That's okay, I'm sure it won't matter. Besides, we're already using the room, and it's not like we can un-spend that. We'll just find out tomorrow." He thought about adding an _"Okay?"_ to that so Seifer didn't get his authority panties in a twist, but decided against it. Too far in either extreme would get bad results.

"Ugh." Hayner held his breath. "Yeah, I guess so. I'm sure we'll deal with it regardless." 'Regardless.' Six months ago, Hayner couldn't have imagined the word 'regardless' coming out of Seifer's mouth unless he was mocking somebody. Maybe Vexen was getting to them more than he thought.

So he wondered what to say next, if he was even supposed to start a conversation here, if Seifer's soft lips and slow exhalation and his pushing into Hayner's hand like a needy cat were a sigh of acceptance: I think we've got some wiggle room here (tone down the paranoia).

He thought about saying, _"We always do."_ But that sounded pretentious and melodramatic, and besides, it was presumptuous. If that moment in the field had changed anything, Hayner had to assume it was for the worst. He was standing on an even smaller rock in the middle of the ocean and the winds were blowing stronger.

There. _That's_ what it was like. Being around Seifer was like constantly waiting to be knocked into the water, balancing on your tiptoes and trying to lean into the breeze long enough that he didn't catch your eye. It was terrible but exhilarating, just like everything else.

He thought about saying _"So why was the guy so weird?"_

But he knew where that train led - Why was the guy so weird? _Oh, he just said some weird stuff, you know._ But he let us get the room? _Uh-huh. I mean, it's fine anyways, unless you have a problem with sharing a bed._

I don't have a problem with it. We've been doing it for ages.

_Okay, cool. Jesus, calm down._

But now precious seconds had passed, and if he replied to something Seifer had said off-handedly - a minute, two minutes ago? - it would stink of overthinking, of panic. He'd spent an entire sixty seconds carefully crafting a reply for Seifer.

No, his best bet would be a new topic entirely. Come up with something safe that they could dive into, let their words mean nothing and their tones do the talking. _What was that? What just happened? What did it mean?_

Or maybe he was the only one who thought like that. Maybe the way Seifer felt about him was simple and two sentences long:

Hayner's this kid I fought with when we were in middle school, but then all my friends died and all his friends died. Now we work together for the sake of convenience, but he's not bad-looking, so I let him kiss me, because what the hell?

Everything hadn't been destroyed just because Hayner had messed up.

Though, that would be easier.

Hell, maybe things would go in the opposite direction, maybe they'd be _hunky fucking dory_ now and they'd do it again and feel better about everything.

Okay so - maybe the whole emptying his thoughts out in front of Seifer thing had been a bad idea. It had led to weird places.

He didn't know what else to do, though; he could fester in silence, staring at Seifer on the bed, or he could sit down next to him and say something.

He scooted over to the bed (right side, he was always on the right side of the bed) and lay down, careful and slow like he didn't want to spook Seifer. He kept his knees bent, and his head on the pillow. Whatever kind of fluff was in this comforter was pretty low quality; it had sunk to the sides which dangled to the floor, leaving the part on the bed disproportionately thin. That felt like a good way of putting what was happening to Hayner right then: all his bad things had left his stomach, where they boiled his insides with acidic hunger. When he lay down, they'd all filtered to his head and the bottoms of his feet which ached from small boots.

"You know what I realized?" he said at length, careful to keep his eyes on the popcorn ceiling, away from Seifer at all costs.

"What?" His voice wasn't particularly sharp, or loud. Not soft or understanding. Just sort of there, a little brown plop in the mud bucket of their conversations, and if Hayner thought like this anymore then he wouldn't finish his train of thought.

"It's been...what, eleven since?" He knew, of course, but it didn't hurt to ask.

"Yeah. 'Bout that."

A big breath. Count to three and off you go. "Eleven years, and I've stayed squeaky fucking clean. Isn't that ridiculous? I don't know about you, but I've never even smoked a cigarette. No coke, no heroine, not even pot. I don't think I've been drunk more than once or twice. Haven't even had sex."

"What, really?" Seifer set his pack down and lay back, supported by his elbows. "Seriously?"

"Yeah, really. It's not like there was ample opportunity," Hayner groused. He wasn't really in the mood for being teased about his virility.

He considered saying "Besides, I kind of had other things on my mind" and instantly regretting it when Seifer rolled over and asked him, "But you and Olette never...?"

_Olette_? Seifer was seriously asking about Olette right now? Hayner was shocked the guy even remembered her name, much less put any thought whatsoever into Hayner's love life. In a way it was kind of...good, since Seifer actually - he didn't know. Seifer thought of him as a person, with a background and everything. Somebody who had a life before, who didn't just follow Seifer around and make his life difficult.

Jesus, had his standards sunk.

Still. Him and _Olette_? Something about the thought annoyed him in a way it shouldn't have, like Seifer was accusing him with an implication. You never pounced on the helpless girl who befriended you? You didn't stick your _dick _in her when you had the chance? Gee, that's a real shocker, Hayner.

"What the hell, of course not! I was _fifteen _the last time I - …" Shit.

Oh, god, Olette. Oh God. Speaking of things he fucked up.

_She could have been fine._

He couldn't tell what, but something in Seifer's body told him he'd messed up. Angled a little away, slumping, avoiding eye contact. And his mouth went down at the corners just a little.

"...sorry," Seifer said. He laced his fingers behind his head and his elbow bumped into Hayner's nose. Hayner just moved his head to the side.

"Why?" he asked, folding his arms over his belly. God dammit, Olette, Olette, Olette, she had such beautiful eyes, she practiced the flute for an hour every day when she first learned it. "_You_ didn't kill her."

"Jesus Christ, Hayner!" With a _whump_, Seifer sat up again, pushing his fist into the bed. His mouth was open just a little, and he looked at Hayner, then the window, then all around like he just didn't know what to do with himself. "God!"

"What?" Definitely fucked something up now. Well, better to do it early on than wait until they'd gotten their hopes up.

"How can you even _say_ that?" He swung his feet around to plant them on the floor, hunched over on the bed's side. "How can you talk about her like that?"

"Like what? Like she's dead?" _Because believe you me,_ he thought bitterly, _I know that better than you do._

"Like it's a _joke_. God, what the fuck is _wrong_ with you?" Maybe there was a little fire in Seifer's voice, but mostly it was quiet, like he'd been pulled down to the ground and shrunk to fit.

Hayner shook his head and felt the place where the comforter met the pillow, that tiny ledge right at the dip of his skull. His head shaking slowed until he felt like a cat, rubbing against the furniture to scratch an itch because the pillow's pull of his hair tingled. He waited for a few seconds, because there were a lot of things you could say to that, but he didn't want Seifer angry.

"She did kiss me," he said with his eyes closed and his hands over his stomach.

Seifer stayed quiet, out of apathy or patience, Hayner didn't know. So he kept going. "When Pence died, she was...I mean, none of us were okay, but she was...really not okay. It was the first time either of us had seen somebody we know die, I think. I mean her parents were dead, but she'd never seen them die, since they sent her to that Children First thing, you know, during the rescue missions."

God, he hadn't thought about this for a while. Those rescue missions had been one of the weirdest times of his life, but they didn't merit thought.

There wasn't time for moping, normally. He hadn't ever thought he'd be grateful for that. But he supposed if somebody died and he was in high school or college with nothing but a load of books to keep him busy, that kind of thing would crush you. Nothing kept your mind off things like struggling to survive.

"And?"

"I dunno. She...left for a while. Two months, maybe three? I don't remember. Long enough that I got worried." He uncrossed his arms and then put his hands on his shoulders, kneading the muscles next to his neck. "Back then I was living in this house we'd found that had a bunch of canned food in it, stockpiling for a hurricane or Y2K, I guess. I didn't have a lot to do. I buried Pence since - well. That took almost a day. I thought about waiting for Olette to come back before I did it, but I didn't know how long she was going to take, and I mean...we saw what happens when you just leave a body out, right?" He breathed in through his mouth and then wrapped his arms around his stomach again.

"So I was alone in this house for a long time. It was pretty sad, I went all Cast Away and started talking to this stuffed animal in the living room when I was really bored. Then one day I'm out on the balcony moping and she comes up to me out of nowhere. I guess I just wasn't expecting it so I wasn't listening for anyone."

"Yeah. I know how that goes," Seifer said. He seemed a little calmer now, and he edged his feet up on the bed again, leaning against the headboard. His boots were still laced firmly around his feet, and Hayner worried briefly about mud in the traction soles getting on the blankets. But it wouldn't be worth it to bring that up.

"Yeah. And she comes - she came right up to me and leaned against the railing. At first I was just glad she was back, but she seemed so...tired, you know? You remember how she was before?"

Seifer nodded and crossed his arms. "Cheerful, kind of a nerd. Pushy."

"Yeah. But also just...optimistic. Like you kind of felt like she'd always have some advice for you. I was freaking out over something stupid once and she said 'There's nothing you can't fix.' But - " The trick with these things, he figured, was to separate the memories with opaque dividers. If he kept his mind on that moment, and not a few weeks later, it wasn't so sad, and he didn't have to start crying. "She was really pale and she had those bags under her eyes. And she grabbed my hand, and we stood there for a while I guess. I mean, we didn't talk. Then she just kissed me."

It was like in that moment everything became clear for Hayner, but he definitely got an idea of what was happening, even if maybe it was wrong. Because it was sort of an Olette thing to do, wasn't it? Maybe not at 11, but four years later it might've been. If you were in love, things would seem less awful. At least the two of them would be together. So if Hayner was the only one left, they had to get together and then everything would be fine, right? It was always fine.

That was maybe the problem. Hayner couldn't kiss her. Olette was the girl he tried really hard to have a crush on, because he'd always known she probably liked him, and things would be easier that way.

He remembered that kiss, soft, hopeful and grey. Olette's princess moment and his...nothing what-so-fucking-ever.

"And nothing else?" Seifer asked.

"No. She kissed me and..." The story was a start, but he didn't need to tell the worst parts. "And then she died a few weeks later. The end."

He waited for another "I'm sorry," another "Jesus Christ, Hayner," but Seifer unfolded his arms and rested them palm-up by his head. "That's around when I found you, I guess?"

Hayner blinked and looked to the wall, where his pack was listing to the side but too bottom-heavy to fall down.

"Can we not talk about that?"

Good job. Build up all this honesty for him and then just tear it down, make it seem like he ruined it. Fucking brilliant.

Seifer had felt the mood dampen, he knew; nothing in his body gave it away but it was still there and it was still obvious, and it was still just as bad as when you did it at the lunch table in the cafeteria.

"Sure. Sorry. Didn't mean to offend."

His eyes were drawn to Seifer's side, to the dizzying chevrons of his coat and the big wood buttons, then up up up his side to his hand. That hand, bare and splayed between them. Hayner wanted to reach out and grab it, rest his hand on top of it, something to make amends. Something had to change.

He was always talking about what if they were in high school, what if they were in college. But if that were true then they wouldn't talk and Hayner would find better friends that he had stuff in common with, so fuck that. He had to deal with his reality and his reality was Seifer.

He wanted so, so badly just to touch Seifer's hand. Just to see if he'd pull away.

Seifer was stronger than they were. Pence or Olette, probably even Roxas. He had made it - scathed but alive, like Hayner. Congratulations, you have been selected to win our prize.

"I guess some people...take it harder than others," Seifer said. "Not everybody can handle this place." Which was awful, really, a terrible thing to say like you could just give up on half the population of the continent, but he was right. And what were they going to do? Moping wouldn't help anybody.

Hayner tried to laugh. "We're talking like old men," he said. "All...fuck, you know. 'Ooh, we're so tough and jaded.'" And then he did start snorting like giggling with his mouth closed. "It's not really that fun, is it?"

"Oh, God," Seifer laughed too. "It's really not." His fingers twitched and he said "Mm. You know, even by today's standards, we're pretty young."

"What?"

"Barely into our twenties? That's not old."

Hayner supposed it wasn't, not that he'd ever thought of himself as rickety and gray-haired. But certainly nobody looked at him or talked to him like he was a little kid, nobody asked him if he was alright or where his parents were, obviously. But Seifer was right. Strictly speaking they weren't _old_, age-wise.

Hayner expected he'd seen more death than his dad ever had, though.

So, you know. Fuck that guy and his screeching about athletic ability.

"...I don't _feel_ young," he said as quiet as he could. "I feel - "

"Old?"

Old people sat in chairs all day and read newspapers. They fell asleep. Talked about how many geese were in the river that day. The word for Hayner and Seifer wasn't 'old'.

"...tired. Just...tired."

"...should go to sleep," Seifer muttered, leaning down to untie his boot laces. It took him a few good tugs to get them off and onto the floor.

"That's never fixed it before."

"Hm." A thin chain, silver at the top and blotched grey down where the plating had been worn off by fingers, hung from the lamp on Seifer's side of the bed. He fingered the bead at the end, rolled a thumb over it and pinched it.

The darkness outside wasn't quite as far along as Hayner preferred - he didn't have a great view of the sky, but it still seemed dusky, almost orange. The sun should've set by now, but then he supposed it could be different here.

"Hey look," Seifer said, pointing to the window. "Orange barfglow, courtesy of downtown. Been a while since we saw that."

"Oh." Hayner rolled over to his stomach and propped himself up on his hands to get a better look at it. "Is that what it is? Shit. That's completely disgusting."

"Isn't it, though?" he sighed and tugged on the chain, clicking off the lamp. The only light in the room came from the barfglow. A sickly orange made of street lamps and computers. "I think I'm becoming one of those assholes who loves trees."

"Yeah."

_Seifer?_

_Yeah?_

_Why did you pick on me in school?_

_I wanted your attention._

Yeah, right. Because that was how bullying worked.

You couldn't just go around saying what you thought when you thought it. Sometimes because it wasn't an okay thing to say, but mostly because chances were somebody else had thought of it already. Everybody was thinking it, but nobody said it because they all knew, and that was comforting in a way that wasn't really comforting at all.

Hayner Conway didn't have a goal. Things would not be better in college. They would not be better with a mom. They would not be better with a blimp, or with money, or with Seifer's love. Things were shit. Maybe he had to tear it all down and start again.

He'd been that way in school - he jumped on the point when you gave up and started over. If he messed up on a drawing, he threw it out. His teachers _hated_ that. You were supposed to _use_ your mistakes and incorporate them into the art, or at the very least just erase them. Hayner hadn't understood that then, and he didn't now.

_Use_ your mistakes? But then even if it turns out amazing, you'll know it wasn't all you. He'd know that part of it, maybe the best part, was an accident because his hand slipped or his friend bumped into him. Even if nobody else knew. He'd _know_ it wasn't quite right. Same if he erased it - it would still be _there_. Hayner had tried explaining this to his first grade teacher, but she'd refused to see reason. He'd drawn all the features of his self portrait scrunched in the middle of a huge face, just to spite her.

In retrospect, missing out on school may not have been the worst thing in the world.

Hayner rolled to face the wall, away from Seifer. He stared at the door. It might be easier to talk to him if he didn't have to see his face.

The orange sat, fat and despondent, on the wallpaper, the door, the shelves. There was no lovely dark _night_, where nothing had color. Orange. The color that grade school kids love to tell you nothing rhymes with. Orange, door hinge. It fuzzed everything, put it out of focus, closed your eyes for you just to get away from it.

Hayner had been spoiled by the great outdoors. You were well and truly fucked when the sky was jaundiced.

For the first time in his life, he wondered if maybe there hadn't been enough destruction. If all these people slept every night with sick clouds instead of stars then they'd tolerate anything, he thought.

"You think Vexen means what he said?" he asked. And yeah, not seeing his face was helpful.

"Said about what?"

"Something about..." Shit, what was it? Hayner remembered liking it in a 'Seifer will hate me if I bring it up' sort of way. "Uh. Something about starting over, I guess?"

"Um." Um, no, that's a fucking stupid thing to say, you gigantic manchild. "Yeah, I kind of remember it now that you mention it." He paused and made a wet sound like smacking his lips. "I don't know, I _guess_ he meant it, I mean...it sounded kind of depressing, the way he said it."

"Like how?"

"Like...didn't he say it's a blank slate and we can start over and not do the stupid shit we did before?"

"Yeah. How's that depressing?"

"Because." Hayner didn't turn around, but he could practically hear the wrinkled nose and Seifer's vague distaste. "It's like saying he's happy all those people had to die."

"Well." Hayner closed his eyes and felt his words vibrate inside of his throat. "I guess so, but it's better than sitting around moping about how awful everything is and then not trying to do anything."

"What, you mean like us?" Seifer giggled.

"Hm. A-yup. Just like us. We're terrible people. We should join the rebel alliances to make up for it," Hayner said, stretching out on top of the covers and smoothing down his shirt.

"There probably are people like that, in groups and shit. You know." He laughed. "_Rebel alliances._"

"Fuuuck. You think so?"

"Mm-hm. There always are. They're probably sitting around having conversations about how to rally the people."

"Oh. So we're just a part of the faceless masses with no minds of our own?"

"Slaves to the system. That's us."

Seifer rolled over to rest his head on his crooked elbow. "Such bullshit. Jesus Christ. Not our fault we don't have time to sit around on our fat asses complaining about everything. I'll rebel against the system after I get some fucking _food._"

Hayner laughed at that. "You're content to be a mindless puppet? God, you sheeple are so annoying!"

"Sheeple?" He rolled over to see the smile in Seifer's voice. Where usually the corner of his eye, the point of his jaw, the shadow of his cheeks reflected in the darkness, now a whole half of his face was cast with dusty orange lines coming through the blinds, warped by his ghost face.

"Hey, I didn't make that word up."

"'Sheeple,' though? Seriously?" He scrunched up his nose and licked his teeth. "Jesus. I guess I should be grateful I found _you_ before I had to join the _rebel alliances_, then."

"Mm." His eyes closed again, and Hayner felt around under his back for the edge of the blanket. This was going pretty smoothly; may want to quit while he was ahead. "Did I ever thank you for that?" he muttered.

"No." The bed rustled. Hayner couldn't tell if Seifer was moving his head or his arms.

"Oh. Well...thanks," he said and ducked under the covers like a seal into water. He risked a glance at Seifer, arms out, staring at the ceiling. At least he wasn't all curled up in on himself like before.

Seifer laughed small and started to work his arms out of his coat; the sudden shifting of fabric seemed too loud for the room. Like turning on the TV when you'd turned the volume up too high the night before. The blast of static broke his peace, just a little.

"No problem."

"I mean it. Thanks," he said again. "That was...not a good time."

"I remember." He slid the coat down to the foot of the bed, then mostly off so that only the sleeve was visible.

That was it for the night, Hayner figured. He was perfectly happy to end it there with neither of them mad or depressed.

When Seifer got under the covers, he turned so his back faced Hayner. Which was fine. If you faced each other everything got muggy and warm, and you woke up with somebody else's morning breath in your face. Hayner turned around too. When he breathed in, his mouth tasted like metal, gas, and the horrible electric buzz of lights in other rooms.

He realized absently that he hadn't eaten in seven hours. But the lights were off and - well, he'd live.

The hunger pangs didn't get _really_ bad until maybe twenty, twenty-two hours, anyway.

* * *

Okay but apparently Vexen had completely ruined him.

Regular meals. Sleeping in a bed. No electricity, isolated, with more stars than sky. Thinking about blimps instead of your dead friends, and standing in the rain instead of kissing Seifer to feel better about himself.

Now that he thought about it, the whole thing made him a little bit too much like Olette. Olette, who tried to fit them together like jamming pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. She'd fanned the edges and damaged them both.

How long had it been since Seifer had turned out the lights? A few minutes, maybe? No more than a few minutes.

* * *

He didn't really keep time anymore, since there wasn't any reason to. Either it was sunrise, midday, afternoon, sunset, or night. The end. All that mattered was how much daylight you had left, not how many hours of sleep you could get until your 7 o'clock alarm woke you up for work at 9 o'clock sharp.

It was kind of inconvenient. He should get a wind-up watch that didn't need batteries.

Build a sundial, maybe.

* * *

The worst feeling in the world is not being able to find a shovel to bury your very last friend. He remembered searching all over the house, hating himself when he realized he'd thrown away the one he'd used for Pence. Because that should have been enough. Pence should have been enough.

He remembered screaming - and now, he knew that was the first time he'd really not cared what the neighbors thought, five years in - screaming and screaming, kicking a wall so hard he broke the plaster. Olette would rot because he couldn't find a fucking shovel, and he'd be too busy kicking and screaming about it to do anything else.

Then that voice. Not soft and plaintive, it'll be okay because it just will, let me kiss you and everything will be okay voice. "Jesus fucking _Christ_, you asshole! Some of us are trying to _sleep_! I should've known being an orphan wouldn't make you any less of a _fucking moron_."

And they'd come face to face. Hayner didn't remember it too well, but he remembered seeing Seifer's face, really _seeing_ it, not 'oh God is he looking at me' thoughts from across the road. He remembered the hollow cheeks, the barest peach fuzz of stubble, and eyes that expected him to be small and angry back. Needed him to be.

Hayner didn't remember it too well, but he remembered, "I need a shovel."

And he remembered, "Fine. Wait here. Keep your pants on."

Then Seifer dug him a hole five foot deep and six foot long and four foot across.

* * *

What did you call someone like Seifer? Friend didn't cut it, enemy was just stupid, lover sure as Hell didn't apply. Brother? Brother made it sound like they'd been through a war together.

Seifer was just the other one. Seifer and Hayner, Hayner and Seifer. For the first few days after school ended, Hayner always felt weird going out and not bringing his backpack with him; he couldn't get used to the lightness on his back. Seifer was his backpack.

Oh god. He could not tell people that. That was just...no.

He zipped out of his head and back into the darkness of the room, underneath the covers, stretched out on his side. He stifled a giggle. He was just not going to get to sleep now, just, really, _wow_. Backpack. Wow.

Hayner groaned and tried to ignore the building pressure in his bladder.

The need to pee was a strange one, he'd noticed. It wasn't painful the way a bruise was, but it certainly didn't feel good. Something he wanted to get rid of, but not something that would kill him. His body was clever that way.

Yeah, very clever, but he still needed to pee.

He slid his feet around and onto the floor, glad for the warm air, and leaked out of the covers. The bathroom was down the hall - if he remembered right.

Right before leaving the room he glanced back. Seifer was still sleeping, or looked like it.

Hayner remembered these mattress ads that talked about how the mattress didn't transfer motion to your partner if you slept together. Stupid, he thought. If you slept next to somebody for long enough, he got used to you getting in and out.

* * *

When he got back to the room, Seifer had turned around, and his sleeping face was perfectly visible in the orange glow.

Was Seifer even handsome? Beautiful? Hayner couldn't tell, anymore. He'd grown accustomed. He knew _he_ liked that face, slow and peaceful with clear, unassuming features. Which was probably all that mattered.

He approached the bed, but he couldn't quite get himself to get back in it. That would mean facing away from Seifer, and he needed to look at that face for a little while. Just a second.

He knelt and stretched his palms across the bedspread, following the bunched curve of the comforter until it twisted up onto Seifer's shoulder.

Hayner felt a little ball of something unwanted in his throat.

_I don't know._

_I love you._

He hadn't realized it until now. He wondered briefly if Seifer meant it, but - no. Of course he did.

"I think - fuck," he said, and made fists in the sheets. "I think you're the only person who's ever loved me, aside from my parents." He stared at the sheets and smelled the musty sweaty person smell, and the gas. "I mean. Pence and Olette, come on. We were in middle school. And Roxas - ...left. He just left, so fuck him too."

He stared a while longer at Seifer's sweet, angry face.

They had never promised to stick together.

_I'm a dead-end bum with nothing at all, working my ass off just not to get shot, and I've filled my pockets with money which isn't even worth anything anymore. I don't make **promises**._

"I think I'd kill somebody to keep you alive," he whispered. "I'm supposed to be applying to grad schools right now but instead I'd kill somebody for you."

He got under the covers and pulled them up to his chin. Took a long look at Seifer's face and turned around again.

"I wish I wasn't okay with that."

* * *

What others think of us would be of little moment did it not, when known, so deeply tinge what we think of ourselves.  
- **Paul Valery**

* * *

Getting Zexion to talk had always been hard, but even Vexen had his limits. The information he volunteered was vague and nameless: "They're all fine," or "Everything's pretty much the same."

Zexion refused to accept food from him. Dried fruits, meat, greens from the garden - met with little head shakes while he slumped at the kitchen table, head down and knuckles on the wood. He reminded Vexen of a trapped animal or a stray cat brought inside. Some combination of nerves and hard-learned wariness dominated any real hunger, even when Vexen heard the stomach growls.

The sky had gone dark; the only light was the emergency candle Vexen had lit when Zexion refused to leave the kitchen. He tried coaxing him: "If you go to the first-floor guest bedroom, I can get the fireplace going. It's not much, but it's warm."

Zexion shook his head again.

"You can't sleep in the kitchen."

"I'll leave."

Vexen sighed, and sat down across from him, cupping his palms over his knees like a patient parent. "I'm not saying you should leave, Zexion, I don't want you to _leave_. But it's really no inconvenience for me if you use the guest bedroom. I could use the company."

Zexion snorted and rolled his eyes, which practically shoved Vexen back to his professor days. "What was that for? You don't believe me?" he said.

"You've got people living here already, Vexen, I'm not blind. I saw your laundry line in the backyard."

He laughed and shook his head. "You were always like this," he said. "Ienzo."

"Please don't."

"These funny little assumptions," he waved his hand in the air and caused the candle flame between them to flicker sideways. "As if you couldn't possibly be important to anyone. I don't know if you're doing it to get me to contradict you - ...Zexion - or if you honestly think I don't want you here. Either way, it's not healthy."

Zexion pinched his lips. He'd been quiet at the university, of course, but Vexen had always gotten the sense it was more out of superiority than shyness. Zexion did not need to stoop down to participation in a lab discussion; he did all his thinking in his own head, privately, and came to you with fully-formed and edited ideas.

This version was a beaten, frightened Zexion with thumbtacks in his paws and cigarette burns on his back. He had literal scars on his hands and kept his hair over his face.

"You've gotten more honest," he told Vexen.

"Best not to waste time when you don't know how much of it you have," Vexen said. "Besides. I'm old-fashioned. I like my bombast."

That got him to smile a little bit, at least.

"Come on," Vexen pushed his luck. "You don't have to worry. The house is going to be empty for a few days, so you'll have time to settle in. And they're nice boys. A bit rude, but they won't bother you, I know."

If this was the Zexion he knew, then right just now he was thinking, _I don't need your pity. I refuse to be a burden._

"I could use someone with practical engineering skills, too. Really, they're all brawn. I don't think they got past middle school before the crash." True on all accounts. Zexion's work had been more theoretical than actual, but the boy had built a few solid things in his time, and they'd worked well enough.

The corners of Zexion's mouth twinged, and he blinked a few times. "Uh-huh."

"Zexion, _please_."

There was only so much nursing he could do for emotional cripples. Seifer was practically a lost cause already, but Zexion didn't even try to hide his quivering behind a wall of angry. Tending to his scars would only do for so long.

"What?" He breathed out through his nose and met Vexen's eyes. "What."

"Don't do this alone. This kind of transition is tough on anyone. Don't lower your odds of survival more than you have to," he said gently.

"What _transition_?" he said.

"Living on your own - or...well. Without them. Zexion, you're physically fine, but in a very primal sense, you've been separated from your...pack. Tribe. Colony. It's a very different lifestyle."

Laughter, hollow and sad, echoed off the walls. "People don't die of loneliness," Zexion said.

"You saw the cross on the lawn," Vexen said.

He inhaled sharply through his nose and looked away, hands tight fists on the table. "That was low," he said.

"It was the truth," Vexen said.

There didn't seem much to say after that. Not for a while, at least. Vexen pushed some more tea on him and watched him drink it, trying to separate the two Zexions in his head. Treating this one like the other wouldn't do. He was fragile, insecure, depressed. If he went on like this, if Vexen let it spiral out of control again, the boy'd never bounce back and he'd have to face that moment again: which two sticks do you choose for a grave? Which string do you tie them with?

Zexion would have to be coaxed back to normalcy, and that started with his feeling safe.

"One night."

"What?"

"Spend a night here, and if you're still determined that stumbling around, bleeding from your fingers like an idiot is a better alternative, then you can make that choice." Vexen scowled and drummed his thumbs together, one on top of the other. "It's a better life, Zexion. There are still bad days, but nobody's going to point a gun at you."

Zexion's eyes fell to his shoes, and he breathed out through his lips. Suddenly Vexen was watching himself as a child, being lectured by a parent, asked straw man questions: "If you hate the rules we give you, Even, would you rather move out? Do you want us to get you an apartment near the school so you never have to see us again, is that it?" The sorts of things for which there were no response. All he could do was wait for them to calm down.

"That's what he said, too," Zexion said. "That there would be bad days. But I'd be safe."

Vexen reached out a hand and touched Zexion's knuckles. "We both know I'm not him," he said, the softness in his gesture betrayed by his voice. Stern, and desperate to deny the connection.

Zexion pursed his lips and nodded. "He misses you. He doesn't always say it out loud, but everybody can tell he does."

"He misses an idea," Vexen said. "I seriously doubt he'd care for my current self."

"Yeah, you grew your hair out," he said. "He'd probably get really annoyed if he knew it was longer than his."

Vexen laughed big and gentle, and leaned back in his chair. "Oh, oh no. Does he still dye it that awful color?"

"No, he more or less just lets it be, now." He smirked. "He almost made it purple by accident. I think that's when he stopped."

"Oh, well. I would've liked to stick around for _that._" They shared a smile.

There wasn't much to say, after that. Vexen decided just to let him sit there for a while. He could just wait, and see if Zexion could think to the same places if left to his own devices.

Zexion stared out the window and laughed, high and quiet and insincere. What he was looking at, Vexen didn't know. Maybe he expected to see a flash of light, or hear a gunshot in the darkness. Maybe he just didn't want to look at this kitchen and all its wretched domesticity.

"Do you remember, uh," he said. "The first test you gave our class? It was mostly chemistry review?"

"Yes." Vexen sighed. "Shaky start to an otherwise decent year."

Zexion nodded. "I did below average on that. The average was bad enough, and I got lower."

"Did you?" He ran a thumb across a smudge on the table, but it was just a mark on the wood.

"Yeah." A nervous hitch in his breath brought Vexen's eyes back to his face. "I'd never done below average on anything before. I'd never done average on anything before. I was supposed to be the smart kid."

"Test scores don't necessarily correlate with intelligence," Vexen said. "There are many possible reasons for - "

"I know _that_, Vexen," Zexion interrupted him, which he took as a good sign. "I don't exactly care if you give me a higher grade _now_." He laughed. It didn't stick. "It was just - the first time I'd ever failed at something. I put all of my effort into schoolwork, and up until that point I'd always seen returns. So if I had a wilting social life, or the body of a malnourished twelve-year-old, at least - at least I was...smart. And then I didn't have that anymore, either."

Vexen reached out, fingers extended, but he aborted the gesture. He nodded.

"I mean. That's just...it's kind of the same feeling, right now. I can't be a good person, and I can't make a difference, but at least I can be important to the group. And now I'm not that."

There wasn't - really a good response to that, was there? Vexen could think of a few placating things about Zexion's intelligence, or his usefulness. But those would do little good. If anything.

He snorted. "I can relate," he muttered.

"What? _You_?"

"This place is good for that," Vexen glossed over it. "Once you've had all those crutches ripped away, when you've got nothing left. You'll never be happy, really, if you need other people to acknowledge you." He drummed the side of his head with one finger. "You've got to be alone."

He stared at him for a while, then at the finger, then the cup in his hands. Zexion didn't say anything. That's a childish thing to say, he must have been thinking, but the corners of his mouth twitched down involuntarily. He looked like a child who refused to pout in front of grown ups.

"It's all gone, though, isn't it," he whispered. His hands tightened around the cup. "Oh, God."

Vexen waited.

"Oh my God," Zexion said again, and covered his face.

* * *

The rain fell alike upon the just and upon the unjust, and for nothing was there a why and a wherefore.  
- **W. Somerset Maugham**

* * *

Hayner woke with a start, and his dream thundered through his head.

He couldn't remember what exactly had happened - a military base or a school or something, with lots of people his own age, and he'd been told to do - _something_, something with a calculator or a ruler that should've been easy - and he couldn't and he kept trying but it didn't work, not with all these eyes on him, and when he tried to back out -

The details faded quickly enough. All he was left with was a deep-seated shame, and a sense of wrongness that he couldn't shake off.

The streetlights had been turned off in the early morning. Thin grey light dripped through the curtains, slinked into the shadows and curled up there.

They should send upper-class kids to Homeless Camp. It definitely got rid of any niggling sense of superiority you had left in you.

Homeless. Jesus fucking Christ. Homeless.

If he didn't connect it to hobos, it was kind of a romantic word, _homeless_, one without a home. No place to be alone.

Speaking of, Seifer hadn't told him how long he'd signed the room out for. Today was day two of the waiting, and they probably shouldn't stay a second longer than necessary. They would have to check in with that parts shop today, too.

Which brought him back to lying there on the bed.

He couldn't remember ever having to wake Seifer up, or Seifer really waking him up - the occasional nudge, maybe, "You awake? Me too." Now that he faced the issue, he realized he had absolutely no idea what the etiquette was. The fuck did married people do in the morning?

Hayner knew the best way to get rid of his funny dream feeling would be to get up, walk around, take his mind off of - things. Reality hadn't sifted all the way in yet. In a few minutes, whatever he'd dreamed about would seem silly, or laughable, but right now he just...

It was this mix of abject terror and crippling inadequacy. He'd known all along he wasn't right, and he hadn't been able to do anything about it. Whatever he'd been doing, he'd outed himself as a moron. He had fallen from the high place he had been sitting. He wasn't a good person, though he couldn't remember why.

He sat up in the bed, leaning the base of his neck against the headboard. Hayner breathed in through his nose, then out again in a whiny nasal whistle.

Man. Mornings were the worst. Not really, but still. He didn't usually wake up in the middle of a dream; usually the effect wore off in his sleep and he just woke up feeling sore.

Badum-badum-badum. Already, he was forgetting what had really happened in it. Something about a - classroom, maybe? With lots of people? There had been lots of people, and shame. The people were wearing off.

Seifer had the gall to still be sleeping like the graceless giant he was. He didn't take up nearly so much room on the bed as he should have. Before, Seifer had probably been the kind of guy who sprawled out over the whole mattress and hogged the covers. He probably looked like a freefaller, mid-jump. Hayner supposed there were some upsides to always being folded in on yourself.

He lay perfectly on his side, his shoulder blades two clean lines down the fabric of his shirt. His back was a triangle, broad in the shoulders and narrow at the waist. Not girl-narrow, not at all, but definitely not a block. He had runner muscles, and a runner back.

It was funny, too, because Hayner had always thought Seifer would grow up to be a wall of muscle. He had the face for it, but his neck wasn't thick enough. Maybe he'd be a block, normally. But they didn't really have a lot of protein in their diets. Hayner supposed it was whippet or nothing, at least for now.

He wanted to reach out and trace those muscles, thin tight strings under skin, wrapped with capillaries. Vexen had said, in that offhand way he had, that most of your body got replaced every few years. Except maybe for parts of your bones and your nervous system, your body was rebuilt, so almost every inch of Seifer had died and regrown during their time together.

Almost all of his parts had Hayner stink all over them.

So, you know. Suck it, Fuu. He was Hayner's now. Even if he didn't want to be.

Hayner decided not to wake him up; he'd just get out of bed, maybe go take a shower. Doing much else in this state of mind was a bad idea.

The bed groaned when he slid out of it and his toes touched the floor. Winter didn't bite too terribly around here, but it made tiles cold as fuck in the early morning.

The bathroom sink was unmarked; the nickel knobs on either side were identical. One for hot, he supposed, and one for cold, but which was which? There was a standard for these things. Hot was always one side. Cold was the other.

He flicked the left one toward himself and watched the water rush out of the tap absently, glancing at his reflection in the mirror. He looked - awful, and slightly pimply. Like a tired rich boy who'd eaten too many Twinkies. His eyes reddened at their edges and pinked in the middle. His pupils were swimming in sting.

"Fuck fuck fuck fuck," he said, as calmly as he could, and grabbed the hand towel next to the sink.

He'd picked right; little puffs of steam rose from the water column. He nearly burned his hand when he stuck the towel under the stream.

He scrubbed his face until it was as red as his eyes, then he got the towel wet again and scrubbed his armpits, then his chest. He took off his shirt and scrubbed his belly and the tops of his hips. He took off his pants and scrubbed his legs, all the way around, especially the backs of his knees where sweat started to sting if you left it too long. He scrubbed his feet.

And after he was as clean as he was going to get, he ran the blackened washcloth under the tap and watched the water go grey for a second before turning clear again.

He snuck back into the room. Seifer was already up.

"Did I wake you?" Hayner said, fishing out a pair of clean socks. "Sorry."

"No, nah, it wasn't you," Seifer said. "Just after you got up the bed got cold as fuck. That woke me up."

Which actually if Hayner decided to read too much into it was really, really nice.

Seifer stretched his arms over his head and arched his back, pushing his head against the pillows with a yawn. His bent knees made a mountain in the covers.

He had very nice arms. Actually. Not that Hayner was thinking about that.

"Been thinking about what you said last night," he said. "About how you're some virginal Disney princess."

"Um," Hayner said.

"I figure we could fix one of those today, right?" Seifer said. "After we find out about cost so we know how much we have left to barter with?"

"You're not buying me a prostitute, Seifer," Hayner rolled his eyes and sat down on the bed.

"Hey! Of course I'm not! I literally gain nothing if I get you a prostitute," he said. Seifer yawned again and pushed the covers to the side. "...fuck are my boots," he groused.

"Foot of the bed," Hayner said without looking.

"Oh. Yeah."

Seifer slid his feet to the floor and reached for his boots, unlacing them. "Shouldn't you put on pants first?" Hayner asked.

"What? Yeah. So, but, you're not listening to my idea!" Seifer said distractedly.

_Yes, because it's stupid o'clock in the morning and you're probably horny and you're going to suggest that we have sex,_ Hayner thought, _when we established seven hours ago that that will make everything worse._

"What," he asked, in a way that didn't sound at all like he wanted to know.

"Your genitals are your business, but we can totally get drunk together," Seifer said.

"..._oh_." He tried not to make the relief too apparent. "Oh that's fine then."

"Yeah." Seifer said. "What?"

"What?"

"What's with you?" He picked up the pants piled gracelessly on the floor and stood up to pull them on. Hayner had the sudden, weird thought that his boxer shorts were probably older than he was.

"Nothing's with me. It's just a weird thing for you to say."

Seifer scowled. Hayner winced. "Is it?" Seifer said. "I guess. Sorry. I just figured..." he looked down at his belt buckle, tapped his thumbs against it. "Whatever. If you don't want to, I mean - ."

"It's okay," Hayner said. "It sounds like fun, I just didn't expect it to come out of your mouth."

"Oh, I'll put anything in my mouth," he replied, wiggling his eyebrows. "For I am a saucy witch."

Hayner just stared at him for a second, then threw a clean shirt at him. "Someone fucking roofied you," he said, grabbing his own shirt. "Go to the bathroom and don't come back until you've sobered up."

With a cackle, Seifer left the room, still just holding a shirt in his hand.

* * *

"Free of charge," they'd said. The fuck?

Nobody gave you things for free. People didn't even do that when there were enough things to go around.

Not completely free, of course - but as close as anyone could ever get to it. "We owe Vexen a lot," Cid had said, "He's a smart guy. We'd like him to owe us a few. Rather be able to call in favors from the magic man than take some of your pickled peppers or whatever shit he gave you to barter with."

And Hayner and Seifer had looked at each other and then at Cid, and one of them had gone "...thanks."

So, well, now they had a day and a night to spend in the city with nowhere, really, to go, and no desire to be anywhere at all.

Hayner was pretty sure there was a rule about getting drunk before noon. Or...five o'clock. Or just during the daytime, maybe?

"We could go to the city center," Seifer said, rolling his feet over the ground and nodding toward the street. "It's not that different from before the crash, apparently. I mean, they get energy from different places now and there's not as much, but it's still one of those places where the people living in it don't have to worry about survival. There's like. Paintings and shit."

"Culture?" Hayner supplied and started off down the street. He hoped Seifer knew where they were going, because he sure as fuck didn't, and it wasn't like there were road signs anywhere. People stole them, he supposed. People were funny.

"Sure. Culture. What the fuck," Seifer said. "All sorts of exciting shit happening in the middle of the city."

"Yeah. We can get scarves and uh - " he faltered.

"Indigenous paintings?" he offered.

"Yeah. Indigenous fucking paintings and scarves," Hayner said, and shoved his hands in his pockets. "Like real tourists."

"Fuck you, you've never met a real tourist."

"Mm," he laughed and closed his eyes, then squinted at the sun. There were no clouds, but it was still cold and dry outside and smelled like clean and not-life, which was probably appropriate for the city.

It smelled like hot asphalt, bitter and black ooze.

Like the playground in September.

So they went into the heart of the city, and the whole time Hayner kept his eyes on people's shoes; he finally realized they'd wandered into the affluent part when the brand names disappeared and instead there was polished leather, and boots and nylon, meticulous tiny hand stitches over the seams of clothing.

Hayner wondered if there was anyone left who made armor.

"Hey, whoa buddy," two fingers in front of his face. Hayner shook his head and looked at Seifer, who tugged him onto the sidewalk. "Don't get in people's way. They're all uppity about that here. You with me, chickpea?"

"What?"

Seifer scowled - or squinted, maybe, in the bright sunlight. He wasn't wearing his beanie. Had he brought it? Hayner was used to him both ways.

"I dunno, why did I say that?" he said. "Rhymes, I guess. Whatever. Let's go."

Hayner laughed. The laughter stayed his his throat and fought his heartbeat.

They kept walking.

Brightness. Even the streets, like the sidewalks here got less wear and tear, the edges of the curbs were still sharp, the streets even instead of warped. And the people wore unnecessary clothing. It was perverse, almost. Somebody in a fancy silk scarf. Ruffles on the edges of someone else's sleeves, fabric that could've gone to fix the wholes over his knees or around the edges of his collar.

Not that everyone was dressed that way - there were plenty like them, in musty hand-me-downs and everything, walking quickly and purposefully and with their heads down. He recognized that look: I do not want to be here but I have to, I'm sorry.

"Seifer, why are we here," he muttered, grabbing his elbow.

"What? Because we have cash to spend. They'd be stupid not to trade." He pointed to a craft store with open doors, lined with burlap paintings and jewelry, little charcoal sketches of people. Somebody was honest to God perusing it, too. Like you could afford to trade food for beauty.

"I'm not getting you a ring, Seifer," he said and turned his nose up. "I don't want to settle down yet."

"What?" Seifer clutched a hand to his chest. The thud was dulled a little by all the padding in his jacket, but the point was there. "You mean you kissed me without intending to marry me? I'm a soiled woman, Hayner."

Hayner snorted and pointed down the street with a finger that only shook a little bit. "There. Bar. Let's go get drunk so I can forget how insane you are."

* * *

Trade.

Like Pokemon cards or pieces of Halloween candy.

Trade.

* * *

I would rather be a coward than brave because people hurt you when you are brave.  
- **E.M. Forster, **_as a small child_

* * *

One jar of pickled cucumbers, which did not grow in this climate unless you were Vexen, bought you five watered down wine glasses or three shots of vodka apiece. A fresh onion, farm grown, no chemicals, not from a rich man's land? More. Bless you boys.

In typical fashion they each went with the wine - it lasted longer, after all, even if it got you drunk slower; and the important thing was always to draw it out. Make it last as long as possible.

Hayner hunched over the round table in the corner of the room, inhaling a strong whiff of rotting cedar and body sweat. Seifer drained the last ounce of wine from his glass.

"This is the dumbest fucking thing," he said. "Do you feel drunk? I don't. I feel like somebody gave me rotten grape juice."

"Isn't that what wine is?"

Seifer tipped his empty glass to Hayner's head. "Exactly. Very good, detective."

"That sounded a little drunk."

Seifer snorted. "I sounded more drunk five hours ago when I complained about making an honest woman out of you."

He sighed.

So they were in this bar, only it was a nice bar. The floor had checkered tiles. The lighting was adequate; there were candles for ambiance. No loud thumping music or anything.

There was an upper floor, the stairs roped off, where men in shining tailored business suits rose and made bland jokes. Some of them stayed on the lower floor later, their hair slicked back, perusing the colorful bottles lined up behind the bar. Smooth jazz, bland and inoffensive, came through the ceiling just loud enough to ease awkward conversations. Hayner had almost been surprised to be let through the door.

To his credit, they'd been ushered to a back table away from the windows, but they were hardly the only underdressed people there - plenty like them in old, too-tight shirts from charity events, walks for cancer and regional marathons.

In boots made to last one cold winter and nothing more.

"Seifer," he said. "Uh."

"What?"

"This isn't a hooker bar, is it?"

Seifer stared down at him. Hayner had flopped over the table, but Seifer was turned, faced the room with his legs sprawled and his arm resting on the back of the chair. "Are you kidding? You've already asked me this."

"But it's night and there are like..." he gestured. "Fuck. Guys in suits talking to guys not in suits."

"Yeah, they're hiring workers, dude," Seifer said, and swirled the glass around a little. "I told you, that's what this part of the city is for. Skilled workers meet up with rich dudes who need shit done. Weren't you paying attention to the waiter?"

"No."

Seifer laughed and put down the glass to ruffle Hayner's hair, which he would have resented more, probably, without alcohol. He didn't _purr_ or anything, but he didn't complain.

Hayner looked straight ahead, at the buttons on Seifer's jacket. At Seifer's chest, which rose and sunk underneath his jacket.

He wanted to say, _I love you too_. But it would come out wrong and he could tell. It would come out _I'd kill for you._

He wanted to say _help me._

He was drunk. A little. Or at least - that was a good enough excuse for it.

Seifer hadn't taken his hand off Hayner's head; his fingers brushed the tips of his hair with a childish tactile fixation. They tickled a little, carrying down to his skull; shivers went straight to his spine. "Hey, Seifer," Hayner said with his eyes far away. "Let's say drunkenness is a good excuse for this."

"For what?"

"Can we talk about what happened yesterday?"

The fingers in his head stopped.

"Why? What happened yesterday?"

"Mmf," Hayner groaned and rolled his head to the side, into the crook of his elbow on the table. "You know."

"Lots of shit happened yesterday," Seifer said.

"Yeah but I mean - most of it was standard shit." He sighed. "And then you left me alone for a while, so I, you know. With my mouth."

"Really?" The hand drew back under the table, but Hayner, oh, he was too scared to lift his head up.

"Fine. Kiss. Whatever. But I mean - "

Seifer just _laughed_ at him, too. He laughed full and loud like something was _funny_. "Ha! Hahaha! God, Jesus, Hay, are you fucking kidding me!"

Oh.

Okay. It was funny to him.

Hayner sighed and rolled upright with his eyes on the floor. His head buried in the sand. They were back here again - back here, where Seifer responded and made no sense. They were on different wavelengths entirely, now, but they always had been.

It wasn't _healthy_. It was not okay.

That's what Hayner thought, sitting across from the table listening to Seifer laughing at him.

_Oh, are we talking about how you stuck your tongue in my mouth? Jesus fuck, dude, and here I thought we weren't gonna mention it, I mean I was gonna save you the embarrassment - but nope! No, Hayner, Hay-hay, I cannot contain myself. You're too funny. Did you think it meant something? You're adorable, really you are._

Seifer laughed for a few seconds at most. That was it! Two seconds of laughter but it crashed the delicate spider web of safety Hayner had around his insides.

Something was seeping out of his linings. A sad grey ephemeral something, wispy, lonely as fuck and so, so tired, curled into his throat and around his belly and covered his eyes.

He breathed it back in.

"Quit laughing," he said, and tried for a smile. He couldn't see himself but he knew it was all wrong. "Come on, drunk! I'm an emotional drunk."

"What? No, it's just - that's what you choose to bring up?"

"How - " Roxas.

Roxas, Roxas hair, and the right color this time, washed and fresh and stepping in the door in a clean shirt and clean pants and clean shoes Roxas, or someone like him.

"Whoa, check it out," he said and patted Seifer's shoulder. "That guy looks just like Roxas!"

"What?" Seifer swerved strangely in his seat. His spine curved and through the slit of the coat Hayner could just make out - but, anyways. He watched Seifer's face eagerly. "Are you sure?" Seifer said. "I guess he's...kind of similar."

"Well, his hair is the same," Hayner said. At least being corrected by Seifer was familiar territory.

"No, no," Seifer said. "You might have a point. I guess he would be older. Did you say he lived around here?"

Hayner shrugged. "It's not like he left a map." He swallowed. "It's not like I cared."

A hand came to rest on his knuckles, just for a second before Seifer drew it back like he'd touched a hot stove. Hayner watched it happen with a detached funniness and watched the grey fog come back to choke his throat. He snorted. "Okay," he said. "Yeah, I get it."

"Get what?"

"I'll meet you at the motel, okay? Sorry for making you so uncomfortable. Really, I am."

He headed for fake Roxas, contestant number three, and tried not to burst out laughing halfway to the bar. Because it was just so awful, wasn't it?

It was so awful.

"Excuse me," he told the guy, and hopped up onto a stool.

Ah, he thought when the man turned to him, those baby blues. He realized he hadn't missed Roxas at all, until he smiled at Hayner.

"Oh my God," Roxas sat up and his smile was so, so bright.

Roxas.

Minus the baby fat, plus a few years.

Hayner lived a one dimensional life. Everyone followed the river. They followed it, Vexen followed it. He'd chased Roxas without even knowing.

And here he was with a shining plastic smile and an invitation home.

* * *

A/N: Shit happens next time! Really. I promise, guns will be involved again soon.

Why is that a good thing.

Shh, just tell me what you thought. It means a lot to me.


	9. Chapter 9

"You're kidding," said Roxas. "You're absolutely kidding."

"I'm, uh," said Hayner, and laughed and coughed a little. "I don't think so."

"What?"

"Not kidding."

Roxas let out this whoosh of laughter like a valve had loosened in his throat. "Oh. I um, it's just - I just wasn't expecting to see you here."

"Yeah, me either," Hayner said. He stared at Roxas's eyes like perfect glass marbles. "Cities are...small, I guess."

"Really concentrated," Roxas said. "No kidding, I mean, I think people just stay more or less in their own little radii of territory - so there's overlap, sometimes. Have you um, have you been here long?" Radii. Jesus, he said radii.

"No. I just came to - " He didn't want to say trade. "Get some things."

"Oh." He drummed this thumb and forefinger on the table. "So you're busy?"

"Not really. Just waiting for them to get the stuff together so I can leave again," Hayner said.

He turned in his chair, and Roxas smiled, smiled, smiled at him. He kept his lips pressed together. "You're here for while?"

"At least until tomorrow, yeah," Hayner said. "I'm living a way's out."

"How far izzat?" he asked.

Hayner looked at him hard. His face had stayed boyish, a little round with big eyes and soft pink lips that never got dry, that never cracked because it was so cold at night. He had been stored in a carefully sealed chamber, preserved for prosperity in all his glory. Plump-faced Roxas. Back from the ether.

"It's a way's," Hayner said again. Rich boy didn't need to know.

"Oh. Oh, cool," Roxas nodded like he hadn't just been brushed off, and put his small - not bony - hand on Hayner's shoulder. "Well, if you're here for one more night, wanna come stay at mine? We've got the room. I'd love to catch up."

Well look at that. Roxas was a regular old fucking socialite, wasn't he? I'd love to catch up. Like your dad at a dinner party. Christ.

"I dunno," he said, which meant no as strongly as it could without saying it outright. "I already have a room rented."

"So let it go empty for a night," he said. He squeezed Hayner's shoulder. "Come on. I'm dying to catch up."

That would be a real laugh riot, catching up. What've you been doing? Oh, nothing much, watched some TV, finished a trashy novel the other day, my azaleas are coming in nicely. You? Oh, well. Seifer and I haven't been shot at in months. So I can't complain.

That would go down really well.

But he looked at Roxas's big broad face, the way he smiled like somebody who honestly still thought you could be friends no matter where you came from or what your background was, and it broke his heart a little. Not out of pity or anything.  
Anger broke his heart.  
"Well, yeah," he shrugged. "Okay. Just for tonight. You sure your - " - don't say handler, Hayner, that was rude - "- roommate won't mind?"

"Axel?" Roxas laughed. "Of course not. He loves people. Especially decent honest ones." Hayner shuddered to think what kind of people he usually saw if Hayner counted as decent and honest. "He'll love you. You've really...seen the real world, you know?"

He smiled. Roxas's boyfriend, he was willing to bet, didn't want to talk to somebody who'd seen the real world. He wanted somebody he could use to alleviate rich man's guilt or he wanted somebody to assure him how worldly he was. Hayner figured that was a guy worth disappointing.

"I guess I could," he said. "One night, I mean."

Seifer had always been the stronger one. He could go on his own for a day.

* * *

It was so creepy being in a building that worked, he realized. Where the elevator shafts had elevators in them instead of being full of trash and hungry dogs. The tiles on the floor were flat, and all in order, and clean. When Roxas led him across the lobby, Hayner couldn't stop thinking about how much effort it took to keep something working like this. How easy it was to let it fall apart. They must have had people who came through and cleaned the floors, whose whole entire jobs were to keep the things how they already were. It just seemed incredibly creepy to him.

"Sorry," Roxas said, "It's not...the most glamorous thing in the world, I guess. I mean I know when I first came here I was expecting like...marble floors and gold filigree and shit. It's just a nice apartment complex, really."

How long ago had Roxas been - had Roxas left? Five years, six years, something stupid like that. Because Hayner was just fucking impressed by the clean floors and the working elevator. He didn't even know what filigree meant, let alone expected it to be in the building.

"It's very nice," he said, because he was broken.

"Yeah, I guess," Roxas said. "Um. Top floor." He motioned toward the elevator.

Hayner bit back an Are you sure that's safe? and just nodded, following him into the little chokebrown box and holding his breath the whole way up.

* * *

"So..." Roxas hummed, fumbling for his keys. "Ah...shit." He held his keyring up to the light and flipped past a few until he got the right one, and the ring jangled with it.

"So how are you, really?" he asked, jamming the key into the lock.

"I'm all right," Hayner lied. "I'm doing fine."

"Really?" he said. The door banged the wall lightly when he opened it, but he caught it and ushered Hayner inside. "You're here on your own, right?"

"Kind of. More or less, I mean," he said, more because he didn't feel like explaining about Seifer than anything else.

"Oh." He set the keys down on a nice wooden table and toed his shoes off onto a mat. He kept them to the right side of the mat, leaving enough room for another pair. "Is Olette back home or something? She didn't come with you?" he said, unzipping his jacket and hanging it up on a hook.

Hayner's boots were covered in dry red dust. His shirt was too large for his bony shoulders; his coat was a little small, and made it hard to wear the oversized shirt underneath it. His pants were sturdy army pants. Vexen had hemmed them and taken in the waist so they would fit Hayner, who was a little short, and a little skinny. His eyes met Roxas's with six extra years of weight and shit and it's not fair with no end in sight, and he saw a kind of blue that was miles away from what was in Seifer's eyes. Roxas's eyes were distant. They were the blue of dreams achieved by somebody else.

"What? Hayner...?"

"Rox, I - I thought you knew. I mean I assumed..." It was already on Roxas's face, the realization, but he started anyways: "Olette..."

Roxas's face got dark and he sat down, right where he was. He sat down right on the carpet in the hall leading to his big old penthouse apartment and put his hands on his shaking knees. "...oh."

And then he said something stupid, which Hayner had said, too: "Are you sure?"

Hayner wanted to tell him about screaming and kicking the house and how Seifer dug him a hole and told him to keep his shirt on. He wanted to ask Roxas how you went about choosing what kind of sticks were good enough to mark your best friend's grave when she died at fifteen of an achy heart. He didn't, though.

"Yeah," he said instead. "I'm sure."

Roxas made a noise, like a laugh that he choked on, and bit his knuckle. "Shit, shit, shit." He breathed in deep but his exhale was shaky; he put his head in his hands and started shivering.

Mostly it was awful because Hayner couldn't hate Roxas when he was on the floor, shivering. He was sad and little and just the same. Everybody cried when they lost somebody. Roxas was losing Olette for the first time, right now, and Hayner had lost her over and over and over but he still felt it hard like a shard of plastic wedged inside him, so he fell to his knees next to him.

"Hey, hey," he said, putting his arms around his shoulders. "God, Roxas, I'm sorry."

Why? You didn't kill her.

Roxas didn't say that. He just sobbed harder like grief was clogging his lungs, sobbed like he was coughing it up, he leaned forward so Hayner had to keep him supported.

After a while. After - a long time, it was just Roxas, crying, and he smelled clean and bitter like medical tape, but he still also stank of burnt plastic the way he had in the street. He breathed heavy and warm and slow, very slow, his sobs wracked his body less until he could talk.

"I just..." he said. "I'd thought you guys were alive together somewhere. I'm...sorry. I mean I lived it, too, I know what can happen out there but I just - " he choked, and Hayner cooed and pressed him to his shoulder like some kind of fucking sap who had the time to spare. Roxas took it. "I just...needed you to be okay. And when I saw you I assumed - "

"I know."

"I'm sorry," Roxas said. "I have no right - "

"Shut up," Hayner said. "Come on. She was your friend, too."

He nodded, and pushed his face into Hayner's collarbone, which creeped him right the fuck out. That he would just touch him like that, so casually. Like it was okay to just touch somebody, to put your face on their collarbone like that, because he knew he couldn't ever do that to Seifer. Seifer would shove him off and ask what was wrong with him, and he'd be right to do it.

But...he was losing Olette for the first time.

There were pieces of Olette's bangs that she couldn't ever get to lie flat, and even five years into the shitstorm she still insisted on wearing socks that matched at least a little, and he once caught her doing crunches before she went to bed.

"It's funny how being homeless doesn't make you skinny," she'd said, and scowled hard. She'd told him what if being pretty meant the difference between a rich man trying to buy her and a rich man falling in love with her and taking care of them all.

So it was a real hoot when Axel had gone for Roxas.

It was really fucking hilarious.

Olette was dead. When she died her skin got all white, and Hayner didn't even touch her for a whole day so she got these little dark spots on the backs of her arms where the blood vessels had given up.

He hadn't actually touched her. After she'd gone, he realized now, holding onto Roxas, that he hadn't once touched her dead body. Seifer and picked her up and put her down in that hole, gentle as you please. And fucking bless him for it because otherwise she would've turned into that awful swollen leaking thing they'd seen on the banks of the river however long ago.

Months. A year.

A long time.

And Roxas was only just now learning about Olette, who Hayner could - who - she had been thin and flat with bangs that turned up and - her face...

Oh.

Hayner didn't start crying with Roxas, who was still pressed into his shoulder, but he wanted to. He just...couldn't. Roxas didn't have a lot of things to cry about, he guessed.

After a while, Roxas lifted his head again, hiccuping and warm and blotchy with red eyes. He wiped half his face with one sleeve and smiled. "I really am sorry," he said.

"Me too," Hayner said.

"Was it...how...?"

Hayner shook his head, mostly because he didn't know. "Not like Pence," he said. "She just sort of...I don't know, she wasn't eating as much, and she didn't really want to go outside, and..." he sighed. "I think she was sick. Not like cancer sick or something, but sick in her head, and it wasn't like I could take her to a doctor and she just stopped caring - I mean I tried, but she just - after a few weeks she wouldn't even leave her room and she was just so tired all of the time - "

"Okay," Roxas said.

Hayner shut up.

Roxas seemed like he was waiting for him to keep going, but he didn't.

"I get it," he said. "And it wasn't your fault. Please don't blame yourself, Hay."

He wanted to spit I don't, you idiot, of course I don't, shove him away and leave, but he didn't do that, either.

"...yeah," he said.

Roxas smiled, pulling back to really look at him before he stood up. Hayner joined him.

"So," he said. His voice was very calm and didn't at all match his face, which was still blotchy, or his eyes, which were still red. "Uh. I...has everything else...been...?"

Unsure what he was getting at - unwilling to guess - Hayner just sort of stared at him with pursed lips. He nodded to show Roxas he was listening.

While he struggled to find things to talk about, Hayner took a chance to look around the house, see what he was missing out on. There was the nice wooden table, up against a bland white wall with a framed photograph of a wheat field covered in snow. Just around the corner was a living room with a maroon couch and a big window that took up almost an entire wall. The window looked out onto a small, glassy lake, probably the source of the stream that he'd seen running through the park, though this lake was calm and dead. It was surrounded on most sides by tame little evergreen trees.

Hayner sucked in a breath and pulled himself back into the house, into the room, the inside place where he was instead of the outside place he could see, and saw the tall chrome fridge and the granite tabletop kitchen island. He could barely muster the energy for it. Inside all looked the same, really. Lots of straight lines and people convinced that the perfect armchair would really make a personal statement about who they were.

So: it was a high-ceilinged place with muted walls, maroon upholstery, and no dust. There. That was where Roxas had been living for six years. Hayner wondered what the bedroom looked like and tried not to sneer.

"Have you been okay, though, mostly?" Roxas finally managed to get out, eyes shining.

"Uh...what do you mean?"

"I mean...finding places to eat and live and work and everything, has that been...okay?"

"Oh, yeah," Hayner lied, "That's been fine. We do okay. We get along."

"Who's we?"

"Just me and...people. Other people I meet." Roxas was a good kid who cared about his old friends, but Hayner didn't need him nosing into things that weren't his business. Maybe he'd spent too much time around Seifer, because he was mapping that conversation out in his head:

"Who's we?"

"Me and Seifer. You remember him. Seifer Almasy."

"Hayner, that guy was a dick, you can't be walking around with him! You hated each other! Don't waste your time on him."

"Really, Rox? Because it's not like I've got people lining up outside my door to sweep me off my feet and bring me to a tall building with windows for walls. I can't do this alone and he's all I have."

"But he's - he's so fucked up, Hay, you know that, you know how fucked up he is. You're just gonna make each other worse."

"Give me another option."

And he stopped there because it was - feeling too much like an argument with himself.

"And you can trust them?"  
"Oh, yeah," Hayner said. His voice jumped up a good couple of octaves. "Yeah, I can trust them just fine."

Roxas nodded at him, then toward the living room couch. The couch was soft but supported, firm, the careful kind of balance that came from underuse. "But you're...I mean ultimately you're on your own? Nobody's waiting for you?"

"Why?" Hayner asked, which of course meant no.

"I mean...you could stay," Roxas said. "For a little while. If you want."

He meant it, too, stupid fucker, in his heart and in his eyes.

"Is that a good idea?"

"Why wouldn't it be a good idea?" he said, and coiled back like he'd been stung. Roxas had always been like that - he had, for the most part, been the sort of stupid fucker who read too much into absolutely everything. Hayner couldn't tell if he was a pessimist or a paranoiac or just an idiot, and he knew, he knew, he knew it was because he was the same way. People said things...the way people said things, they could mean anything. Is that a good idea might mean No. Or it might mean - are you sure?, or I'm giving you a chance to back out just in case, or - "Won't your boyfriend have a problem with that?"

"What, Axel?" Roxas laughed. "Axel, he's - no. No, he's fine, he'll like it. Talking to you. He likes talking to people like you, I mean - not people like you, obviously. But he...he'll like you. God, I don't even know what I'm saying. That's not what I meant. But you know." He nodded at a painting on the wall, a long stretch of forest without any birds or deer or animals at all. Just trees and rocks.

"Not really," Hayner said. This might be an easier subject, he thought. At least easier than Olette or Seifer. Talking about Axel might make Roxas a little nervous, scared of offense (serves him right), but just then Hayner didn't begrudge him anything.

He imagined what he'd do if somebody came down from out of the sky and loved him and asked to take him away. He'd only seen Axel a handful of times before he'd taken Roxas away, mostly as secrets, as accidents.

The first time was the most embarrassing. He remembered calling his name out, over and over, hey Roxas, hey, Roxas where are you, I don't know, Pence, he's not replying, and he'd stumbled down a road and looked into the dark doorway of a bar to see something tall, dark, towering over Roxas. It was awful. It reminded him of being a little kid, when you only reached somebody's ribs. When you were raised in a place where logic and words were supposed to be the final say and then you were twelve and you realized the biggest kids would get the most food.

And a big tall thing towered over Roxas.

He remembered - screaming, then, like an idiot, because if you shouted then an adult would come. Obviously. But Axel had just raised his head and Roxas had laughed, a lot, too much. In retrospect Hayner wondered if it had been nerves. Laughter was like vomiting your heart out sometimes.

Roxas laughed now, too. "I mean that he's...he's harmless, Hay. You'll like him. I mean he's not...what you'd expect, from somebody like that, I guess? He doesn't act like money. He doesn't. He's a good guy."

"They always are," Hayner said before he could stop himself.

Roxas frowned. "Who's they?" he said.

"I don't know," he said. "People we love. People who love us. Everyone's always gotta justify everything," he waved his hand and sat back on the couch, looking at the painting. It was an original. The paint was thick and globby in places.

"Justif- um. What do you...mean by that?" His voice was guarded. His words tiptoed around what he really meant. It was adorable, kind of, in a way Hayner had forgotten about.

"Isn't that what always happens?" he said. "We do bad things, like, like we're mean to people or we fail at things or we break them, and then we have people who love us sitting around, so they can tell you it wasn't your fault, and you're a good person, and you're just tired and you're better than most people, even if you're not. No one ever is." He wasn't making sense, but he didn't care. Roxas wasn't Seifer. He didn't even come close. Hayner could say all the stupid clueless shit he wanted, and Roxas wasn't gonna call him out on it.

"Well..." Roxas licked his lips. He stared at his toes. "You kinda have to, don't you? I mean...if you're gonna live with yourself, you can't go around...telling yourself you're a bad person."

"Why not?"

"Because - you'll hate yourself! Jesus Christ. That's a terrible way to live."

"Better than lying," Hayner said, "Once you get used to it. It's a helluva lot better than making everything seem better than it really is."

There was a hand on his arm, a damp warm little hand curling around his arm, and Roxas said, "What is this really about?"

It's about how I'm bad, but I can't change, and Seifer's bad, and he can't change, and together we're just awful and I don't know how to fix anything but starting over will make it worse, and I want to peel off my face, and it's not about you but you won't believe me because it should be about you, and Hayner thought, I wish I could just look at you and have you know everything I'm thinking because I think it hurts to talk.

Out loud, he said, "Nothing, sorry. I'm just so tired. You know how it gets." It wasn't worth explaining.

"Yeah." His hand rubbed up and down Hayner's arm. "'m so sorry, Hay," he said. "I feel so helpless."

"That's nobody's fault," he said. "What're you supposed to do?"

"I don't know," Roxas said. He brought his arms around Hayner's shoulders. "I just feel like...I should be doing something."

"You are," he said. "This is - " he touched his fingers to Roxas's wrist, "This is...helping. Thank you."

He didn't mean it, but then, he never did. In the short term, he supposed, it was easier to let your friends think they were good people. They did him the same courtesy.

* * *

Axel tried his best to be quiet when he came home. It was late; Roxas liked to fall asleep at the weirdest times.

But Axel had big feet - big shoes, on those feet - and the wet rubber squeaked on the wooden floor when he came home. He toed his sneakers off in the entrance hall, rapping his knuckles against the plaster to see if Roxas was up.

"Rox?"

"Sleeping," said a new voice.

Some scrappy blond kid was standing in front of Axel's window, staring outside with his hands stuffed in his pockets. Axel didn't panic, but it took some effort. He held still for a second in case the stranger felt like explaining.

"Sorry," the guy said. "I don't think he meant to. I think he meant to introduce us."

Axel raised his eyebrows. "Feel like introducing yourself, then, buddy?"

The guy glanced at him with his mouth absently open, flicked his eyes back to the window and shook his head, "Right, yeah, sorry, sorry, of course. I..." He sighed.

"Um. Hayner," he took two steps forward with an outstretched hand only to let it fall before Axel could reach out. "Yeah. Old...old friend of...Roxas's. You don't remember me." It wasn't an accusation, just a fact; you don't remember me.

"Name sounds familiar," which was Axel's way of saying, yep. I don't.

"Sorry," Hayner said. "I dunno, I thought I saw him in a shop and we started talking, he asked me back here to catch up, said I should meet you."

"No kidding?" Axel dropped his bag on the floor, kicking it toward one wall.

* * *

One thing Hayner'd figured out like — ten days in or, or something like that, it didn't matter — was that nothing tired Roxas out like emotional strain. He'd slept like a coma patient for a while. Hayner would have to kick him or shove him to get him to wake up.

And it was like that now, only it wasn't at all, because the tables had been thoroughly turned and what Hayner wouldn't give to be locked in that room with the peeling green paint again. To have Seifer to exchange suspicions with.

Roxas was asleep with his head on Axel's leg, and Hayner was so, so fucking tired, but he was used to it. He'd been tired for going on eleven years now. In his bone marrow there was tired and there was no getting rid of it. He couldn't think straight for the haze.

"He knows me better than I know myself, most days," Axel said. "I mean, he knows what I need."

If Hayner thought that meant fucking and bedtime handjobs to get him to sleep, his face didn't show it. There were a ton of innocent ways to interpret that sentence but — well, he was a product of his environment, and all that.

"That's great," he said. He kept his eyes on the coffee table.

"So he…he made the right call, that's all," Axel said. "Telling you to stay. Telling you to meet me. I've been dying to talk to you."

"I'm not a super interesting person to talk to," Hayner shrugged.

"It's not that — " Axel sighed. "It's…no, man, believe me, I know how condescending this gets. But maybe you can…I have these friends, right, lap of luxury, sitting in their lawn chairs drinking fruit smoothies and just talking themselves to death. You know."

"Yeah," Hayner said. He leaned against the arm of the couch and flicked his eyes up to the window, the neat, groomed lake and trees. Yeah, he knew. He used to be one of them. Not his problem.

"So maybe you can clear something up for me. You know, give me some evidence to back up my claims."

"We get most of our clothing from abandoned houses," Hayner said. "I don't know anyone who makes their own, like, not from scratch."

"Wh— " Axel laughed. He had a pleasant laugh, very economic, a little puff that expanded his ribs just enough to test the buttons on his shirt. "Good to know. You get asked that a lot?"

"A few times," Hayner said. He stretched his bare foot out onto the carpet. Carpets. Whole surfaces covered in soft stuff to keep your bare feet warm. What an idea. "Why? What'd you wanna know?"

"They're just, a few of them have got this idea from books and old essays," he said, wrinkling his nose, "It all stinks a little of Social Darwinism to me, that's all. That if you have trouble finding food or a place to sleep at night or staying warm in the winter, you don't worry about…" he rolled his hand in the air, "Other, less immediate stuff, like your place in the universe. Finding love, reading books."

"Uh-huh," Hayner said.

"Well…" Axel scowled. "There you go. That's what they think."

He huffed. The rug was so soft, felt so nice on his feet, would feel nice if he stood up and walked all around the room, all over the floor. And stop as soon as he got to the hardwood. Seemed terrible. Seemed easier to put on slippers.

"Good for them," Hayner said.

Axel raised his eyebrows. "So are they right, then?"

"Fucking of course not," he said. "What do you want me to say? People like that never change their minds." He flicked his eyes up to Axel, whose face was smooth, who was leaning his cheek on his fist. "No offense."

"None taken," Axel said.

"I mean…I don't know about everyone," he said. Falling in love or reading books. He thought of how it had felt to fist his hand in Seifer's hair, how it was greasy, and wet with rainwater, how they hadn't said a word about it. "But I've never met anyone like that."

"I figured," he said. "It's like they're talking about zoo animals. I didn't want to think that was true."

"You gonna tell them that?"

Axel laughed. He settled his hand on Roxas's hair, which set off this kind of — sadness, a little cold lump above Hayner's belly and underneath his throat, because he had no one to touch his head when he slept. Axel laughed and said, "Of course not. People like that never change their minds."

* * *

Hayner was tired of being there for other people. What he wouldn't give to yell. He wanted to scream at the top of his lungs and break glass against walls and destroy perfectly good useful tools. He wanted to wreck things and then leave.

He sighed; one thing he'd learned was how much effort it took to make a place stay clean. This house, Roxas's nice little apartment, it wasn't exactly neat, but the furniture was all in order and lined up straight with the walls. The chords for the lamps were coiled.

He'd seen places with the furniture knocked over, but more the places where there was nobody to close to blinds so the sun bleached patches of the floor, or nobody to close the drawers all the way, nobody to discourage the bugs so you could find whole cities of cockroaches in the cupboards. There was a difference between abandoned and destroyed.

Even Vexen's house - those places on the walls where the wood was lighter underneath picture frames, it was things like that. It would've been so easy to knock over a chair and leave it knocked over.

He'd just love to do that here, do it right fucking now while Roxas was telling him to spend the night, really, you have to, it would make me feel better. He wanted to slap him or kick his shins or kiss him so Axel saw it. He wanted to wreck this place, and then just leave.

"You wouldn't be any trouble," Roxas was saying. "We've got plenty of room. There's no sense holing up in some slum when you could be staying here, even for a few nights, and - the offer stands for more than that." He looked past Hayner's head then down at the floor.

He was so small. Well-fed, and a grown up, sure - in a way Hayner hadn't noticed, but they were big now, all of them. He looked at Roxas and saw the guys he used to worry would grab at Olette. He guessed he and Seifer were like that now, too. Seifer had always been big.

"I was talking to Axel," Roxas said. "And we both pretty much agreed that you can stay as...long as you want, you know?" He laughed before Hayner could open his mouth. "No pressure, obviously! Nothing like that. We wouldn't force you. But I just...I know this must sound stupid, coming from me, but I figured it was better than living day-to-day. I don't mean that...that it's...nothing's coming out right," he said.

Hayner smiled at him. He didn't even - he didn't even have to think about it, not even for a second. Never mind that he'd be some kind of glorified goddamn pet. It didn't sit well with him, knowing he'd get soft and then do something bad and get kicked out on a whim. He didn't know this place. He'd rather be comfortable than safe any day.

"I think I should just go," he said. Roxas's face got a little tight, his mouth closed, he frowned. It was a pretty impolite thing to say. Hayner had had to get rid of his manners to make room for more important things.

"Oh," Roxas said. "Was it...did I say something - "

"It's fine, Roxas," Hayner said, as gentle and cold as he could.

It felt amazing. He wasn't under Seifer's boot; he wasn't surrounded by a crowd of people deep in the same shit he was. He didn't have a nice house or a loving partner or clean shoes, but he had a caution in his voice that made Roxas feel small. If he was a bad person for using it, then so be it.

"Right," Roxas said. "Sure. I'm, I'm sorry that..."

"I'll see you later," Hayner said, and left before Roxas could finish.


End file.
